
Class 
BookjN/IlLjiJk 

CqipgIitN°_lim. 



CSPSPiam DEPosm 



Christian Democracy 
for America 



5 



BY 

DAVID D. FORSYTH 

and 

RALPH WELLES KEELER 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



Cop^Tight, 191S, by 
THE METHODIST BOOK CON'CERN 



©'GU5U3262 

AUS 17 ISIS 



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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword 7 

I. Our Modern Frontier 9 

11. The Rural Church 39 

III. The Immigrant — ^A Changing Problem of Home 

Missions 67 

IV. The City 93 



LIST OF MAPS AND CHARTS 

PAGE 

United States Government Irrigation Projects in Frontier Ter- 
ritory 13 

A Ten- Year Frontier Study 17 

Exceptional Frontier Groups 22 

Frontier Territory Administered by the Department of Frontier 
Work of the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Showing Density of Pop- 
ulation per Square Mile 27 

Land Available for Occupation in Frontier Territory 33 

A Serious Problem for Eural Methodism 41 

Membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church Compared with 

State Population 47 

Why Ministers Leave the Country. White Rural Ministers' Sal- 
aries, Including Parsonage 53 

Why Ministers Leave the Country. Rural Colored Ministers' Sal- 
aries, Including Parsonage 55 

]S"ot All of the Rural Field Is Agricultural 61 

Protestant Population by States 71 

Rapid Growth of Cities 96 

Where the Cities Grow 99 

America's Large Cities 112 



FOEEWOED 

The appended chapters are issued in brief form and are tentative. 
They are issued in this form: First, so that they may be used at the 
Summer Institutes and Conferences. Second, that a large circle of 
friends may have opportunity to criticize and offer suggestions. Third, 
as a foretaste of what is coming when the final work is done. 

It is our purpose to issue, under the auspices of the Joint Cente- 
nary Conmiittee, two text-books. One will be on the home field; the 
other will be on the foreign field. 

The summer Conference edition of this book contains only four chap- 
ters. The complete book will have eight chapters, the four included in 
this edition and four additional chapters. The titles of the additional 
chapters will be as follows : 

Chapter 5. The Church and the Negro. 

Chapter 6. Christian Democracy Power Plants. 

Chapter 7. Variants of the Task. 

Chapter 8. The Challenge of the Christ. 

In the meantime, will you consider yourself a committee of one 
to write your definite criticisms and suggestions so that we may have 
them in time for the final editorial revision ? 

D. D. Forsyth, Chairman, 

S. Earl Taylor, Executive Secretary, 

Joint Centenary Committee of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, 

111 Fifth Avenue, New YorTc. 
Frank Mason North, 

Secretary Board of Foreign Missions. 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 



CHAPTER I 
OUR MODERN FRONTIER 

What Is the Frontier'? 

For the Church of Jesus Christ the frontier is not a 
thing of the past but a live and pressing problem of the 
present. Our map shows the frontier as defined by the 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church. It includes the western third of the 
United States plus Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands, to- 
gether with all work among Indians. This territory is as yet 
sparsely populated. There are more people in New York 
city than in the twelve States comprising the frontier. Mon- 
tana has more natural resources in extent and variety than 
Japan, but has yet only 600,000 people, while 52,000,000 
dwell in Japan. In other words, Montana has the propor- 
tion of only two and a half people to the square mile while 
Japan has 257. The abundant resources of the frontier have 
been and will be utilized only as the increasing pressure of 
population forces development. There will be frontier con- 
ditions and problems until the population reaches the satu- 
ration point, and that time is a long and indefinite period in 
the future. 

Available Lands for Settlement 

The development of the frontier depends largely upon 
the amount of land open for settlement. There are several 
varieties of this land. The older frontier was filled largely 
by people who took up homesteads of 160 acres each in re- 
turn for residence upon and cultivation of the land. Later 
on, when it was found that much of the semi-arid land could 
be tilled successfully in alternate years, the government 
made the unit 320 acres over rather large specified areas. 

9 



10 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

In certain specified districts it is now possible to secure 
homesteads of 640 acres, most of which, however, is avail- 
able only for grazing. 

The total number of homestead entries in frontier terri- 
tory made by land officers for 1917 was 43,727, a number 
exceeded only in 1913-14. In one State in 1917 four out of 
ten land offices registered at the rate of over 100 homesteads 
each week. In Montana over 3,000,000 acres were appro- 
priated in 1917, and yet more than 11,000,000 remain avail- 
able for appropriation. The federal government, moreover, 
gave to every State two sections, 16 and 36, in each township 
for educational purposes. These lands by rental or by pur- 
chase are finding their way into the hands of intending set- 
tlers. In one instance, in 1917, $1,250,000 worth of such land 
was sold for an average price of $17.84 per acre. Some of 
the land brought $40 per acre. This was land without irri- 
gation. 

In most Western States the national government in 
order to secure the building of the great transcontinental 
railroads offered them large amounts of public land. The 
Northern Pacific Railroad, for example, received the alter- 
nate sections of land along its track eight miles wide when it 
went through territories and forty miles wide when it went 
through States, thus receiving in all 44,000,000 acres. The 
Canadian Pacific Railroad sold last year more than 750,000 
acres of land. That which was irrigated averaged $46 per 
acre and the unirrigated $16. Most of this land lay directly 
north of the frontier and is similar in natural characteris- 
tics. These large railway grants are being disposed of from 
time to time. The prices are raised every few years, but as 
the population increases there will be no difficulty in selling 
them. There are also hundreds of thousands of acres of 
^^logged-off" lands in the Northwest. These are owned by 
lumber companies and are held at such high prices that 
settlement upon them is now discouraged. But as the popu- 
lation pressure increases they also will all be occupied. 

Then there are the large private grants, given in the 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 11 

days of Spanish and Mexican domination, especially in New 
Mexico and California. For example, the Maxwell grant 
near Cimarron, in New Mexico, is 35 by 55 miles in extent 
and contains 1,714,764 acres. Only 5,000 acres of this land 
was farmed while the original owner was alive. The Beale 
Ranch of 270,000 acres in San Joaquin Valley, in Cali- 
fornia, was divided for sale as late as 1912. Nearly one half 
of the coast land of California for twenty -five miles inland 
was given in such grants. These areas tend constantly to be 
greatly broken up and sold in smaller lots. Finally, there 
are numerous large private ranches, variously acquired, all 
over the frontier. Perhaps the best example is that of the 
Miller and Lux ranches in California, which extend from 
San Diego to Oregon. It is said that the owners could drive 
their cattle or sheep from Mexico to Oregon without having 
to camp overnight on any land except that owned by the firm. 
The acreage runs into the millions and it has been conserv- 
atively valued at $30,000,000. Recent developments, by 
which careful preparation and cultivation of the soil in dry- 
farming areas produces crops with an annual rainfall as low 
as ten or twelve inches, leads to the assumption that most 
of this land is potentially agricultural. 

Irrigation 

In 1915 there was an irrigable area of 1,405,000 acres 
on irrigation projects owned by the United States. The 
amount actually irrigated was somewhat over a million 
acres, 850,000 of which were ^^ cropped,'' or cultivated. The 
average value was $38.25 per acre cropped. The majority 
of these projects are a long way from completion and their 
gradual development will continually open up opportunities 
to settlers. For instance, the Yakima project in Washington 
is only one third completed and in one unit (59,499 acres) of 
that project in 1917 the average return per acre was $73. 
As population pressure increases more of the irrigable land 
under various reclamation projects will be brought into use. 

The figures above and map accompanying show only 



12 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

those projects under the control of the United States Re- 
clamation Service. Extensive use has also been made of the 
Carey Land Act in which the States participate. Espe- 




59 



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UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT IRRIGATION PROJECTS IN FRONTIER 

TERRITORY 



cially is this true of Idaho, while all along the water courses 
in the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast States irriga- 
tion to the extent of available water resources was practiced 
for many years by private individuals before the national 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 13 

government became interested in it. In fact, the irrigated 
acreage of all sorts is now 15,000,000. This is, roughly 
speaking, ten times the area shown in the map; 40,000,000 
more acres could be irrigated if sufficient capital were ex- 
pended in constructing dams, reservoirs, and ditches. The 
irrigation projects with the small-sized farm and intensive 
cultivation present opportunities for a complete and fine 
community life. Four or five thousand acres of cultivated 
land will sustain a good-sized town, where the farmers may 
live together and enjoy good social and educational advan- 
tages. The Truckee-Carson project in Nevada has 200,000 
acres of irrigable land, only one sixth of which is actually 
irrigated and cultivated. It will be some years, therefore, 
before this project and others like it reach their full de- 
velopment. 

Chaeacteristics of the Frontier 

Newness is the first characteristic of the frontier. So 
far as Anglo-Saxon and Protestant civilization is concerned, 
most of it is less than two generations old. This newness 
means that resources for the development of the country 
must come from the outside. Each settler must build a barn 
instead of inheriting an old one built by a former generation. 
He must build a house, a schoolhouse, a courthouse, public 
business buildings, churches, and parsonages. Public build- 
ings can be constructed out of the proceeds of bond issues 
and the cost thus passed on to posterity. Mercantile houses, 
elevators, and banks may be built on credit. The church is 
at a disadvantage unless the outside world can also be drawn 
upon for substantial assistance. This is the raison d'etre 
of Home Mission and Church Extension Aid. 

In recent years modern methods of transportation and 
communication have caused great rapidity in frontier de- 
velopment. For instance, in the town of Richey, Montana, 
the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce writes that ^'lots 
were sold on August 18, 1916, and our town is only 18 months 
old. We have about 450 population, 40 business places di- 



14 CHEISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOE AMEEICA 

vided among almost every possible enterprise. There are 
five grain elevators, two steam-lieated hotels, three pool- 
rooms, two garages, four hardware stores, four restaurants, 
three lawyers, three land officers, two banks with over $120,- 
000 each, two drug stores, four general stores, two black- 
smith shoj)s, a bakery, a dentist, a bowling alley and shoot- 
ing gallery, a moving-picture theater (brick building), five 
lumber yards, a confectionery, a shoe-repairing shop, a 
theater and dance hall combined, a two-room and concrete 
basement school with about fifty pupils and two teachers, 
two butcher shops and one church with a very small attend- 
ance. ' ' 

It is this last item which challenges Methodism. Help 
must come from outside. The church which succeeds will be 
the church which goes into such a community when it starts 
and is s^Tupathetic and helpful to the people in the time of 
their comparative poverty. Later on it will be the church 
to receive their generous support. It must, however, have 
an adequate leadership in order to mold the life of the com- 
munity while still plastic. Southern California offers a 
good illustration of this. Here the ministers came to the 
coast with the people. As many as 22 ministers of a single 
Conference came and established congregations while the 
people built homes. Dr. Freeman D. Bovard himself estab- 
lished 13 churches during five years of service there. The 
church developed along with the community and a spirit of 
cooperation grew up. 

In northern California such was not the case. Evangel- 
ical churches came as a result of the interest of individuals, 
and evidently no adequate and organized attempt was made 
to control the developing situation. The result is that for 
many years past the situation in northern California has 
been very discouraging from an evangelical point of view. 
Not over 1 per cent of the population in San Francisco and 
surrounding cities is in the membership of the Methodist 
Episcopal Churches. Eoman Catholicism, Judaism, and the 
indifference or irreligion of the ' ^ forty-niner ' ' seem to have 



OUB MODERN FRONTIER 15 

been the determining factors in the development of northern 
California. Then there is the Mormon Church in the State 
of Utah. If home missions had been adequately presented 
to the moving population of the Mississippi Valley in 1830, 
the Mormon problem of to-day would have been much more 
nearly under control. Because home mission efforts were 
not sufficiently well organized the Mormon Church got a 
good start, and then later on developed in isolation, and to- 
day presents a difficult task to American Christianity. 

The foregoing should not be considered as a sure fore- 
cast of the development of the frontier. As a matter of fact, 
nothing is more uncertain. In fruit sections there must be 
continued war against insects, while the problems of market- 
ing have to be solved. Not infrequently the irrigation engi- 
neers considerably underestimate the cost of the project and 
the settler is called upon to pay much more than the amount 
he expected to pay when he took up his claim. The ditches 
may break, or the dams go out through faulty construction. 
The building of a projected railway may be delayed for 
years, or in dry-farming sections drought may come. Even 
in agricultural communities the settlers must learn to take a 
chance. 

This element of chance is even more true in mining 
towns, especially those where high grade ores are found. 
There is a town in Utah, which was formerly the fourth in 
size in the State. It had 2,351 inhabitants in 1900, 1,047 in 
1910, and has now a population of two, and they are hired 
watchmen. The Board of Home Missions and Church Ex- 
tension carried on Methodist work in this town for a num- 
ber of years. There is still some church property to be 
found there. It should not be concluded thoughtlessly that 
the money expended in this work was wasted, for the peo- 
ple reached by this work during its continuance are now 
somewhere else, and the effect of the work done by Method- 
ism is being felt in the places where they are now. Two lay- 
men who at one time worked in this church are now district 
superintendents in other Western States one thousand miles 



16 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

apart. In all such mining communities district superintend- 
ents have difficulty in deciding just how long to stay in a de- 
caying community, and when to let go in order that the re- 
sources thus released may be used in developing still newer 
territory. 

Special Featukes of the Fkontiee 

MINIKG 

The foregoing has to do with the natural development 
of the frontier. There are several other features to be taken 
into consideration. Mining, one phase of which was re- 
ferred to in the preceding paragraph, is one of these. It is 
difficult for many reasons to build up strong and stable 
churches in mining communities. For one thing, the people 
are not stable ; they are continually moving from one camp 
to another. Then the type of their occupation contributes 
somewhat to recklessness and a lack of regard for conven- 
tional and well-established institutions. Such mechanical 
systems as that of the triple shift, where the miners work 
eight hours (a very good thing in itself) each day, the 
shift moving forward to a different eight hours every two 
weeks, interferes with regular habits of churchgoing. The 
preacher can only have one third of his congregation present 
at any one service, and that one third changes every two 
weeks. The household habits of the miners are affected 
by the shift on which they work, and their wives and children 
are also affected. Moreover, as physical conditions become 
more difficult in the mines there is a tendency for American, 
English, Irish, and Welsh miners to go to work * ^ on top, ' ' or 
to leave mining altogether. Their places are taken by 
Italians and Finns or any one of half a dozen Slavic groups. 
These are people of strong physique but very difficult for 
the evangelical church to reach. 

Labor troubles are frequent in mining towns. The old- 
time miners were markedly individualistic in thought and 
action, while the newcomers, mostly foreigners, are easily 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 



17 



moved by leaders speaking their own language. The grad- 
ual passing of the mining interests under the control of very 
large corporations, with all the evils of absentee ownership 




A TEN-YEAR FRONTIER STUDY 



and sometimes of tactless management, have resulted in 
much trouble in the labor field. Strikes in Colorado a few 
years ago in the high-grade mines had serious consequences, 
duplicated only by the more recent troubles among the coal 



18 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

miners of that State. An ex-governor of the State of Idaho 
was blown up in his home as an incidental result of these 
same troubles. 

In Utah, labor unions are without much standing or in- 
fluence, and the lot of the laboring man consequently is not 
what it ought to be. In Montana the passing away of the 
Western Federation of Miners was followed by what can 
only be described as a period of industrial anarchy, and this 
has only recently settled down to a certain extent. In Bis- 
bee, Arizona, in the summer of 1917 the miners were for- 
bidden to join the American Federation of Labor. The 
I. W. W. saw the open door, quietly organized men, and a 
strike followed, seriously handicapping the government in 
its work of winning the war, because copper is one of the 
chief basic materials needed. The town officials, many of 
whom were influential in mining companies, packed up more 
than eleven hundred of these strikers, put them and their 
supplies on cattle cars, and shipped them out into the desert 
of New Mexico, an adjoining State. This illegal and violent 
action not only embittered the laboring men of Arizona but 
also had deleterious effects upon the morale of shipbuilders 
and lumber workers on the Pacific Coast. Just recently in- 
dictments have been found against the prominent men who 
were responsible for the deporting. 

It is not necessary to enlarge upon the difficulties that 
such troubles make for church work. Community life is 
broken up and families are forced to leave. Welfare work, 
if there is any, is interrupted. The hold that the church may 
have on the people of the towns is broken and very hard to 
regain. The ideals of social, moral, and religious life, such 
as they may be, are forgotten. If the church, under the 
leadership of its pastor, takes sides with the mining com- 
pany, it loses its influence entirely with the working men ; if 
it takes sides with the laborers, it is possible that it may be 
forced to close up entirely. For in practically all mineral 
sections the title of church property is given by mining com- 
panies only in the form of a lease, consequently a church 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 19 

could be closed and forced out of town very readily if its 
policy did not suit the men in charge. 

STOCK RAISING 

Another special feature of the frontier is stock-raising. 
Between the day of the buffalo and the day of the plow, there 
was the day, first, of the cowboy and then of the sheep- 
herder. More than 400,000,000 acres are still available for 
stock-raising purposes. The largest area of this sort is 
found in central Oregon, where one may travel for two hun- 
dred miles without crossing a railroad. It is difficult to 
establish and maintain churches in regions given wholly to 
stock-raising. Few cowboys or sheepherders are married. 
Where there are no families there are no settled commu- 
nities, and where there are no settled communities there are 
no normal churches. It requires a church to make a com- 
munity. It is also true that a community is a necessary 
background for a church. The stock-raising sections tend 
constantly, however, to pass into agriculture, and with the 
coming of the latter there is opportunity for normal church 
work. 

THE LUMBER CAMP 

In the lumber sections there is a third complicating 
feature in frontier religious development. Work in the lum- 
ber camp and sawmill towns is seasonal and workmen are 
transitory. Many of them are single men. Many of them 
come to think that they are without standing in society and 
thus offer a fruitful field for the propaganda of the I. W. W. 
There are some Methodist Episcopal churches in lumbering 
communities, but up to the present time very little special 
work has been done among lumber workers. A district 
superintendent whose territory is largely given over to 
lumbering, says: '^In the towns where shipbuilding yards 
are located, business is very fine. These towns have one 
third foreigners, consisting of Finns, Russians, Italians, 
but mostly Austrians, among whom no church work is being 



20 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

done. The American workmen are mostly men who shift, 
often making church work decidedly hard to establish. In 
some of our towns most of the people have moved away 
to the building centers for bigger wages. The churches 
have had to reduce the salaries of their pastors. These are 
distinctly missionary fields now. The only welfare work is 
done by the lodge. In fact, very little work along this line 
is attempted. All around these towns are the logging camps, 
where very little religious work is done. ' ' 

In another district we find that no organized work is 
being done among the loggers by the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. The Scandinavians form the majority of the 
people. Speakers sometimes visit sections and talk to the 
men, but it is hard to do anything with them. There are 
350,000 men in the West engaged in the lumber business. 
The amount of timber still standing is such that it will take 
many years to cut it down and work it up. One other de- 
nomination has realized the need of churchworkers and has 
ten missionaries in the lumber towns and camps, but these 
missionaries to the lumber-jack can only do a fraction of the 
work required. 

NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING 

The increase in the number of foreigners, as has been 
shown in the mining and smelting towns, is being felt all over 
the West. They are largely taking the place of the English- 
speaking laborers. These new laborers may be Mexicans, 
who labor in the beet fields of the Southwest, and go even as 
far north as Idaho. Japanese, Koreans, and Russians are 
also extensively used in the cultivation of beets. The truck 
gardens outside of San Francisco employ thousands of 
Italians. In North Dakota there are rural districts which 
are occupied by foreign-speaking colonies who live a rather 
clannish life, having their own churches. They furnish very 
refractory material for the growth of English-speaking 
churches. In many places where the English-speaking 
farmers become well to do, they rent their farms to foreign 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 21 

tenants, and this again interferes with the progress of church 
work. The work done by these foreign laborers is seasonal, 
and the problem of taking care of them in a religious and 
social way has hardly been touched by any home mission 
agency. 

MORMONISM 

As Utah is a frontier State, Mormonism cannot be over- 
looked. The official name of the Mbrmon Church is the 
*^ Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.'' This 
church started about 1830 and now numbers about 500,000 
in the world. There are 450,000 in the United States, with 
293,000 in Utah, 78,000 in Idaho, 15,000 in Arizona, 15,000 in 
Wyoming, and not more than 5,000 in the other States. 
The growth per year is about 10,000, including those bap- 
tized from Mormon families. The church is generally 
thought to be greater than these figures indicate. This im- 
pression is due, first, to its concentration largely in a single 
State, and the control thereof which results ; and, second, to 
the unique missionary propaganda which the Mormons 
maintain. 

There are about 1,400 missionaries in the field all of the 
time, 150 of whom are women. During their two years of 
labor their support comes mainly from relatives, the church 
paying only their return fare to Utah after the completion 
of their term of service. At present numbers of Mormon 
missionaries who were formerly in Europe are in this coun- 
try, but when the war is over it is expected that there will 
be fewer than usual in this country and that there will be a 
special drive in European countries. 

For the size of the propaganda it is remarkably ineffec- 
tive. This is due to a lack of merit in Mormonism, even 
good missionaries being unsuccessful with it among intelli- 
gent people. Most of the missionaries are lacking in expe- 
rience and education. It is probably true that the liberaliz- 
ing effect of this missionary propaganda on the Mormon 
Church at home, due to the broadened outlook of the young 



22 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

people who are sent on missions, is greater than the evangel- 
izing effect on the world outside. 

The results of evangelical missionary work in Utah so 




Merpbers Probationers Schdara Pasbra Pro perty Su port Benevolences 
SBftMlSH ~420 554 2,615 2 ^45;00oii204" &Q84 

INDIAN 600 596 19,700 



CHJNESE 344 


45 


S48 


.7 


175^000 


2,644 


812 


JAPANESE; 1,227 


522 


848 


20 


160,000 


9497 


1.983 


UTAH 1,704 


lid 


3200 


16 


^000 


13000 


2,966 




EXCEPTIONAL FEONTIEE GROUPS 



far have been largely the modification of Mormon principles 
and practice in certain important points rather than the con- 
version of individual Mormons to evangelical faith. The 
changed attitude of the Mormon Church toward education, 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 23 

toward the United States government, and toward the Bible 
and Christian doctrine, has been largely due to the efforts 
of evangelical missionaries. In each case there has been 
witnessed a change for the better in Mormon teaching. An- 
other effect of Christian missions in Utah has been to cause 
a good many of the Mormon people to lose faith in Mormon- 
ism. They become merely nominal members of the church 
while in reality they are agnostics, or even atheists. Be- 
cause of the social, commercial, and political power of the 
Mormon Church in Utah they do not change their technical 
relationship with the church, but they have little or nothing 
to do with it. Few of them can be induced to attach them- 
selves to any other church. Their children, however, con- 
stitute a fine field for evangelical effort. The difficulties of 
evangelical propaganda are due largely to the fact that it 
must work under conditions created by the Mormon Church. 

The chief growth of Mormonism after reaching Utah, 
for many years was in immigration from Great Britain and 
Scandinavia. Nearly one fourth of the present population 
of Utah was born in these two sections. The success of the 
Mormon propaganda among these people was due, first, to 
the concealment of the non-Christian aspects of Mormonism ; 
and, second, to the promise of material success, such as se- 
curing better wages, or of obtaining free farms. In recent 
years these two factors no longer operate to the same extent, 
and Mormon propaganda is not so successful. As a rule, 
Mormon converts are not now to be taken to Utah, but 
are expected to remain where they are. Thus Mormonism 
seeks to take its place as a world-wide and not a localized 
religion. At the present time a temple one hundred and 
sixty-five feet square is being built at Cardston, Alberta, for 
the use of the Canadian Mormons, and another seventy- 
eight feet square is being constructed in the Hawaiian 
Islands for the twenty-two thousand Mormons who live 
there and in New Zealand and the South Sea islands. 
Doubtless later other temples will be erected in Europe. 

There must, of course, be some reference to polygamy. 



24 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

About 1890 the Mormons were so impressed with the power 
of the United States to enforce its laws that the president 
of the Mormon Church, Wilf ord Woodruff, signed a mani- 
festo permitting the discontinuance of the practice of polyg- 
amy. On this basis the prosecution of Mormon polyga- 
mists stopped and Utah was admitted as a State six years 
later. There is no doubt but that the manifesto was a sub- 
terfuge. Practically all the then existing unions have been 
maintained, and it is estimated on good authority that about 
two thousand polygamous marriages have been consum- 
mated since it was issued. Nevertheless, the practice of 
polygamy has steadily decreased. This is due chiefly to the 
forces of economic and social evolution, which render its 
continuance precarious. Polygamy flourishes mostly in the 
patriarchal period of human development and not in the 
manufacturing and commercial period. Moreover, the rise 
of the feminist doctrines, with their emphasis upon woman 
as an individual sufficient unto herself, has had its effect, 
for this doctrine is the precise opposite of the whole theory 
and teaching of Mormon theology. 

There is no reason to believe that polygamy is a force to 
be reckoned with in this country in the future. But how 
soon the deeply embodied theological basis for polygamy 
may be eliminated from Mormon theology by the pressure 
of evangelical effort and public opinion it is difficult to say. 

One of the chief reasons for the slow growth of the 
evangelical church in Utah is due to the fact that the major- 
ity of the non-Mormons going to the State are not connected 
with any church and are indifferent to any religion — some- 
times indifferent to morality. The minority who are church 
members and exemplify the virtues of evangelical faith have 
not been sufficiently numerous to give a correct impression 
to the Mormons of what the Christian Church really is. As 
time goes on this condition will change for the better. Al- 
ready the Christian Church in Utah is becoming stronger, 
more normal and indigenous. What the Home Mission 
Boards ought to do now is to equip their work properly with 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 25 

creditable property and a well-prepared personnel. In gen- 
eral, it may be said that Utah is a ^'foreign missionary field 
at home" and that the proper attitude to take toward the 
Mormon Church is the attitude that our missionaries in 
other lands assume toward religions which we as Christians 
consider inadequate. 

The Relation of Home Missions to the Development 

OF the Fkontier 

The first Protestant sermon preached west of the Rocky 
Mountains was delivered in 1854 by Jason Lee near the 
present site of Blackfoot, Idaho. Since then, in most States 
the development of the church has kept pace with the mate- 
rial growth or outdistanced it. The acquisition of the Ore- 
gon Country came largely from the efforts of Mr. Lee and 
his colleagues. In the rapid development of Iowa, Nebraska, 
Kansas, and also of Oklahoma, the Christian Church was 
at the forefront. Not many years ago Dr. John R. Mott 
made the statement that the best response on the part of 
young people to foreign mission service came from the 
upper Mississippi Valley — a part of this same home mis- 
sionary territory. Moreover, a great deal of applied Chris- 
tianity has been put upon the statute books due more or less 
to home missionary influence; such, for instance, are the 
laws prohibiting the liquor traffic now to be found in nine 
out of twelve of the frontier States; and of the remaining 
three, Nevada and Wyoming are scheduled to vote on prohi- 
bition in the fall of 1918. Most of these States also have 
woman suffrage and laws for workmen's compensation, 
regulation of public utilities, the abolition of child labor,' 
the minimum wage, the limitation of hours of service for 
women, and the initiative, referendum, and recall. 

The West must now be depended upon as the source of 
supplies in members and money, not only for the extension 
of the church in foreign lands, but also for the redemption 
of the great cities. Thus, home missionary contributions to 
the frontier constitute an investment rather than a benevo- 



26 CHKISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOR AMERICA 

lence. A district in North Dakota illustrates this: Five 
years ago the district was largely missionary in character. 
Since that time twenty charges have become self-supporting 
and twenty new fields have been opened ; these in turn will 
become self-supporting a little later. Contributions to home 
missions have increased thirty per cent, and to foreign mis- 
sions fifty per cent, in spite of the fact that three of the five 
years have been characterized by partial or total crop fail- 
ures. 

It should be noted that as a rule the more self-reliant 
and ambitious of the population are the ones who emigrate 
. to the West. They are not quite so amenable to institutional 
life and not so easy to get into a church organization, but 
when they do join a church these same qualities make them 
very valuable members. It should also be noted with regard 
to the appropriations of home missionary money to Western 
States, that these same States are owned in the East. East- 
ern capital controls the mines, the railroads, the timber, and 
the water power. Hundreds of millions of dollars every 
year are sent to the East in dividends and interest. In many 
cases the people who receive these vast amounts of money 
are absolutely indifferent to the social, moral, and religious 
welfare of the people through whose efforts primarily this 
money is made. It is in reasonable and proper response 
for benefits received that these people should make contri- 
butions to the social welfare of the Western States. 

Exceptional Geoups on the Feontier 

THE OEIENTAL 

The Orientals present an interesting problem. Many 
years ago a large Chinese immigration set in, and these men 
were used in building railroads, in mining, as domestic serv- 
ants, as laundrymen, and some went into mercantile estab- 
lishments. Eventually the American labor unions raised 
such an outcry that the further coming of Chinese was pro- 
hibited, and of recent years their number has been decreas- 



28 CHRISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOE AMEEICA 

ing. Later on tlie Japanese began to come. They have 
greater qualities of leadership than the Chinese, or, perhaps 
more accurately, come from a somewhat higher class. They 
made very rapid progress in agriculture, industry, and 
commerce. The same outcry was raised against them as in 
the case of the Chinese, and under a so-called ** gentlemen's 
agreement'' between the governments of the United States 
and Japan, the Japanese are no longer coming. A few 
Koreans have come to this country, and more recently sev- 
eral thousands of Hindus. It is not likely that these ele- 
ments will be permitted to become very much larger than at 
present, consequently the problem is a static one, and the 
effect of Christian service among these people is to be felt 
mainly in the countries in Asia from which they come rather 
than upon American life. Many of the Japanese Methodist 
preachers now at work in Japan were converted, and to a 
certain extent educated, in the Japanese Missions of the 
Pacific Coast. There are also a considerable number of 
flourishing Christian churches in China, the origin of which 
can be definitely traced to Christian missionary effort among 
the Chinese in California. Together with Hawaii, these 
Oriental missions may be regarded as one of the very best 
wedges for the evangelization of the Orient. 

INDIANS 

The Indians are gradually increasing. There are now 
about 350,000. Of these 70,000 are children under ten years 
of age ; 60,000 are members of evangelical churches ; 90,000 
are adherents of the Eoman Catholic Church, and 130,000 
are as yet not identified with any church ; of these 60,000 are 
in tribes where there is no opportunity to learn of Christ 
either from Protestants or Eoman Catholics. The condition 
of the Indians varies greatly with their location and the 
property which they may have had. In some cases they are 
very poor; in others there are large amounts of money 
invested to their credit by the government at Washington. 
It is hard to tell which of these classes it is most difficult to 



OUE MODERN FEONTIER 29 

reach through religious effort. The help which comes to 
those more fortunate is not an unmixed blessing, for it tends 
to pauperize them and to curtail the development of in- 
dustry; furthermore, there has always been a tendency on 
the part of the government to treat them too much as wards, 
and not to recognize their competency for citizenship when 
that is really a matter of fact. In the matter of education it 
seems wise to put Indian children as rapidly as possible in 
the public school or in reservation day schools. This facil- 
itates the process of mixing them up with other elements of 
the population and preparing them to take their places as 
American citizens ; and it has a lifting effect upon the par- 
ents as well. Nearly 700,000 acres of land are cultivated by 
Indians at the present time ; 78,000 Indians are United States 
citizens, and almost as many read and write English. Some- 
what over 60,000 children are in school, but 16,000 are not 
yet provided with educational facilities. 

The work of the Methodist Episcopal Church among 
Indians is among the following tribes : Oneida, Onondaga, 
Ottawa, Saint Regis, Seneca, Mohawk, Chippewa, Black- 
feet, Klamath, Lake Modoc, Nooksak, Paiute, Pomo, Poto- 
watomi, Siletz, Shoshoni, Washo, Yukaia and Yuma. The 
work in several of these tribes is done by the Woman's 
Home Missionary Society. There are ten or fifteen thou- 
sand Indians in small tribes in California who are uncared 
for religiously, and for whom the interdenominational au- 
thorities would like to have the Methodists assume the re- 
sponsibility. In general, it may be said that the Methodist 
Episcopal Church has not recognized the greatness of its op- 
portunity with regard to the Indians, and is'not now bearing 
its fair share of the burden incident to their evangelization. 

SPANISH AMERICANS 

In the five southwestern States of this country dwell 
about 1,000,000 people of Mexican and other Spanish blood. 
It is probable that about 500,000 of these were bom in this 
country, possess American citizenship and are proud of it, 



30 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

but do not speak the English language, and are inadequately 
educated. The fathers of many were in this country when 
we took the territory from Mexico in 1848. Others were in 
Texas when that country seceded from Mexico. Due prob- 
ably to the great distance from the Eastern centers of our 
population and lack of missionary activities, they have been 
woefully neglected. It is a perfectly fair statement to make 
that our country has done vastly more religiously and edu- 
cationally for the Spanish-speaking people in the Philip- 
pines and Porto Rico who came to us in 1899 than it has so 
far done for the Spanish people of the Far West who came 
to us half a century earlier. For instance, the public school 
system did not go into effect in the State of New Mexico 
until 1893. Education is the great need of these people, and 
Christian education at that. The best work that is being 
done among them by the Home Mission Boards is in the 
Spanish schools which they conduct. It is also necessary in 
the larger centers to have churches with parish houses well 
equipped for a variety of forms of social service. People of 
this sort in Texas are cared for by the Southern churches ; 
those in Colorado by the Presbyterian Church ; the respon- 
sibility of the Methodist Episcopal Church lies in New 
Mexico, Arizona, and California. In Albuquerque College 
the Methodist Episcopal Church has an institution doing 
good work for young men, but one which greatly needs addi- 
tional equipment and support in order that it may enlarge 
the field of its activity. 

In addition to this 500,000 people, it is estimated by 
border officals that 500,000 more Mexicans have come across 
the border to this country in the last six years. They are 
refugees from the troubles in Mexico, and those who are 
drawn this way by the shortage of unskilled labor, due to the 
war in Europe. There is great demand for these people to 
work as sheepherders, as section men on the railroads, 
copper miners, and as workers in the beet and cotton fields. 
They are well adapted to the climate, and have gone as far 
north as Idaho and Iowa, and as far east as Philadelphia and 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 31 

New York. Regardless of when the war stops or whether 
the revolutionary troubles in Mexico cease, it seems to be 
certain that for climatic and for other reasons there will 
never be any fewer Mexicans in the United States than there 
are to-day; rather there will be more. These new Amer- 
icans, as a rule, are very poor. Their ideals of sanitation 
and hygiene are elementary. About 80 per cent cannot read, 
and those who are educated are apt to have imbibed revolu- 
tionary ideas and to be against the state, the church, and the 
established order of human society. In marked contrast to 
the American-Mexicans, these people tend to congregate in 
towns and cities ; 60,000 of them have their headquarters in 
and around Los Angeles. A very encouraging work has 
been developed among these people in Southern California 
by the Methodist Episcopal Church. The English-speaking 
Methodist churches and Epworth Leaguers there have 
shown a very generous interest in this work, and contribute 
about three quarters of the budget necessary to carry it on 
each year. A good church has been erected for them in 
Pasadena, and this should be duplicated many times in other 
centers. The most interesting institution is the Plaza Com- 
munity Center with its Institutional Church in Los Angeles, 
for which $25,000 was appropriated from the Opportunity 
Fund of the Board of Home Missions and Church Exten- 
sion. The plant will cost not less than $200,000. It wilLpro- 
vide religious, medical, educational, industrial, and welfare 
facilities for the Latin-American population of Southern 
California, and its beneficent effects will be felt in at least 
two countries. The Spanish American Institute at Gardena, 
ten miles from Los Angeles, is an interesting industrial 
school for Spanish and Portuguese boys which is promising 
to become the Hampton Institute of the Mexican race. The 
work of the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 
coordinates closely with that of the Woman's Home Mis- 
sionary Society in its fine girls' schools at Albuquerque, 
Tucson, and Los Angeles and its social settlement house at 
El Paso. 



32 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

Hawah 

Hawaii celebrates the centenary of the coming of the 
gospel to the islands, along with that of Methodist missions. 
A hundred years of contact with the gospel since the first 
Congregational missionaries began -work has made it true 
that the native Hawaiian is no longer a missionary problem. 

Our Hawaii Mission has work among the Japanese, 
Koreans, and Filipinos who compose two thirds of the peo- 
ple on the Islands. Besides this a fine English work in 
Honolulu is being done. This most strategic and most 
charming spot under our flag is to the Oriental *^ where the 
West begins. '^ The Filipinos are most responsive to the 
gospel and have broken with Romanism. Koreans also 
readily accept our work with a deeply spiritual note. 

The great problem is that among the Japanese, who out- 
number the native Hawaiians four to one. They are, 
through birth and politics, getting a majority of the posts 
of influence. Buddhists are lavishly bidding for the Jap- 
anese youth, having built a $100,000 temple at Honolulu. 

We have 22 churches and chapels in Hawaii, with 58 
preachers and exhorters, 1,711 full members and 1,916 in 
Sunday school, and over 400 in day schools. 

The Centenary Program calls for college-trained 
American citizens, native traveling secretaries for the re- 
spective races, with pastors, Bible women and institutional 
plants to wisely occupy the four islands assigned to our 
church in the local missionary comity. 

The aim is to have increasingly all services in English 
as in the public schools. This calls for directors and work- 
ers trained in the United States with funds to approximate 
the cost of respectable standards of living in these islands of 
opportunity at the ^'Crossroads of the Pacific.'' 

Alaska 

The Methodist Episcopal Church puts into Alaska only 
about one twentieth the amount of money that is annually 
appropriated by non-evangelical work in that great terri- 



mm 



MMI 







34 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

tory. It is not doing its share of the work there. The Wo- 
man's Home Missionary Society is doing fine work among 
the natives along educational, social, and welfare lines. The 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension maintains 
pastors at five points. The superintendent of this work is 
one of the pastors. The English-speaking population is the 
objective. Distances between the points occupied are so 
great that meetings of the preachers cannot be held, and 
whenever the bishop visits the country he simply goes from 
one district to another as a district superintendent would 
do on the mainland. 

The building of the new Alaska Railroad is opening up 
large wastes of country to settlements of this character. 
There is much agricultural land, while the mining interests, 
both in coal and copper, are yet in their infancy. Gold, 
which has made much of the Alaskan reputation, is still 
found in quantities. The fishing interests are of growing 
importance. Since Alaska has been in the possession of the 
United States, the income we have derived from it has been 
over $600,000,000 or more than eighty times the amount 
paid. The climatic conditions are quite similar to those in 
Scandinavian countries, and much of the permanent popu- 
lation is likely to be Scandinavian. 

The number of points occupied by the Board should be 
materially increased. There should be a superintendent to 
give all his time to the work, and a traveling evangelist ; each 
of these should be equipped with a gasoline launch, with a 
musical instrument, with Bibles and other literature. Min- 
istrations of the gospel could thus be brought to numbers of 
fishing and canning settlements that are now wholly unevan- 
gelized. 

The Centenary Program 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has been and is by far 
the most successful frontier church. The Department of 
Frontier Work of the Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church has a strong 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 35 

committee which has the best body of experience and tradi- 
tion of any department in the Board. The policies evolved 
through its past history are the best obtainable to-day, and 
they need modification only in slight degree. The Centen- 
ary means most in a financial way to the Methodism of the 
great cities; next to the Methodism of the decadent rural 
districts ; least to the frontier. For instance, the Centenary 
asking for the frontier area of Helena, which includes the 
States of North Dakota, Montana, and southern Idaho, is 
almost exactly the same as the Centenary asking for the 
Calumet region, which includes part of one county in In- 
diana. This is due largely to the more refractory character 
of the human material which has to be worked in the latter 
section. Nevertheless, the expenditures scheduled for the 
frontier are vital in order that the work now started may 
avoid the deterioration which has come about in some of 
the older parts of the country. 

To do this it is absolutely necessary to provide from 
the beginning modern plans and competent personnel. The 
modifications of frontier policy which the Centenary makes 
possible are twofold : 

1. The higher standards of life on the frontier due to 
the introduction of modern methods of transportation and 
communication, and the better mobilization of financial 
credit by which a town one year old may now possess public 
buildings as good as were formerly found in towns ten years 
old, requires larger initial gifts for the building of churches 
and parsonages and larger loans where these are necessary. 
The administration of the Board, and still more, the think- 
ing of the church has been keyed to a figure of $250 as a gift 
for a church or a parsonage. While that figure is occasion- 
ally useful even yet, in most cases it must be doubled, at 
least, in order to be of real value. The rectangular church 
used purely for purposes of worship, with no special facil- 
ities for religious education or for social life, side by side 
with the modern, well-equipped, consolidated public school, 
is not much in demand. The Centenary gives the opportu- 



36 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

nity to put in equipment from the beginning that is adequate, 
and thus by controlling community life, to avoid the pitfalls 
which have been encountered by rural workers in older 
centers. 

2. Somewhat related to the above is the problem of 
overchurching. The little one-room church is a natural 
corollary of several churches side by side in the small com- 
munity. Where there is only one church it is much easier 
to secure the type which is necessary for rural community 
service. This problem cannot be settled theoretically or 
rapidly, but the questions in the Centenary survey are 
framed to develop in every case whether or not there is a 
real need for the Methodist Episcopal Church in the locality 
mentioned. These concern the number of other churches to 
the population, their membership, the frequency of preach- 
ing services, and whether or not they have a resident min- 
ister. Unless there is need shown for the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, the Centenary asking is not permitted. 

So far, the straight frontier work presupposes a popu- 
lation predominantly English-speaking, and with a back- 
ground of evangelical thinking. 

ExcEPTiONAJLi Towns 

When we come to the work in exceptional towns, such as 
railroad, mining, and smelting settlements, and lumber 
camps where a considerable part of the population is for- 
eign-speaking, and where the intellectual and religious back- 
ground is either sacerdotal or agnostic, much larger capital 
expenditures are required for the erection of structures 
which offer unusual facilities for social service; and in 
larger towns more money must be spent for the maintenance 
of staff workers as well. The Centenary for the first time 
makes possible the realization of ideals long held by leaders 
along these lines. 

Distinctive Gkoups 
Finally, the work among certain distinctive groups will 



OUR MODERN FRONTIER 37 

make large drafts upon Centenary appropriations. Our 
work among Orientals, Indians, Mexicans, and the Mormons 
has suffered to an incalculable extent by reason of poor 
equipment. In many cases the money appropriated for 
maintenance has been almost wasted because of inadequate 
equipment, while only the poorest, most illiterate and least 
influential part of the population has been touched. The 
Oriental and the Spanish- American have drawn an unpleas- 
ant comparison between the small and shabby structures de- 
signed for their use, and the large, fine, well-located build- 
ings for English-speaking people. On the Indian reserva- 
tions the churches are brought into competition with the 
United States government, which makes lavish expenditures 
for its schools, residences for agents, and other buildings. 
The church that is cheap and ugly is positively discredited 
by the contrast. In Utah the new Mormon churches are fine 
buildings architecturally; are splendidly furnished, and ex- 
ceptionally good music is provided for religious services. 
Hence, the small and ordinary chapel, which may have had 
some place as a schoolhouse twenty-five years ago, but which 
now has to stand on its merits as a place of worship, is 
simply overshadowed. 

The Centenary funds, by furnishing proper equipment 
for our work among these distinctive groups, will serve to 
secure the largest possible returns from the appropriations 
now made regularly to them. 



Questions eor Discussion 

1. Why has the church a frontier to-day^ What is it? 

2. Describe the public land situation in the frontier. 
Also the irrigation projects. 

3. State the chief characteristics of the frontier. 

4. What special features complicate frontier church 
development ? 

5. In what ways is Mormonism a menace? Discuss 
its scope. 



38 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

6. How have home missions entered into the life of 
the frontier? 

7. Discuss the Indians; Spanish Americans. 

8. How does the Oriental enter into the scope of 
home missions ? 

9. Compare Methodism's opportunities in Alaska with 
those in Hawaii. 

10. What improvements in church work must be made 
in the frontier States? 

11. How will the Centenary help in this respect? 

12. In what way may we help in Christianizing the 
frontier ? 



n 

THE RURAL CHURCH 



CHAPTER II 
THE RURAL CHURCH 

Methodism's Rural Heritage 

The rural cliiirch has been a part of the life of Meth- 
odism from its very beginning. Following the little groups 
of pioneers westward across the Alleghenies and Rockies, 
and finally to the coast, the Methodist Episcopal Church has 
pitched its tent wherever a handful of settlers made a clear- 
ing and built a home. The great number of these little set- 
tlements which had to be ministered to made the circuit sys- 
tem of the Methodist Episcopal Church one of the important 
living links between these people. All of these settlements 
where churches or preaching places were established were 
rural, although we are accustomed to refer to them as fron- 
tier communities. This fact indicates the complexity of the 
home mission problem, as a church may be both city and 
foreign, or rural and frontier, or city and frontier. 

Many of these communities of other days have never 
ceased to be rural. Many rural communities to-day have 
not yet a church building wherein to worship God. Many 
rural communities having a church building or a school- 
house where preaching is conducted do not have a resident 
pastor. While the farmer has been replacing his ancient 
farm tools with modern farm implements he has not yet used 
the same wisdom with reference to his church. He has in 
many places been satisfied to drive to church in an auto- 
mobile and worship God in a building whose ramshackle 
condition would disqualify it for either garage or stable. 
Religious conditions which have resulted from the failure of 

39 



40 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

tlie cliiirch in the country to keep pace with other forms of 
advance have already caused a decay in rural life. 

What Is Rural? 

But what is rural? There are those who question 
whether ^ ^ rural ' ^ means the open country or the village. By 
^^open country'' is meant a section where there is really 
nothing at all, not even what might be called a hamlet. If 
there are a half dozen houses, and a store, and a school — a 
community — it is called a village. Out in the open country 
the next building is a farmhouse. Good roads, automobiles, 
and the tendency to visit centers of activity all influence the 
people of the open country to go into the villages or towns 
for their recreation and worship. This has lessened the 
importance of the church in the open country. The great 
religious problem, as well as the life problem in general, 
is in the village where is the center of rural activity, where 
life itself is touched. The extent of this village activity 
center is seen throughout the church. In the West Philadel- 
phia District of the Philadelphia Conference, 60 per cent of 
the Methodist Episcopal churches are in the villages or 
small towns of under 2,500 inhabitants. The same is true of 
the Saint Albans District of the Vermont Conference, while 
on the Juniata District of the Wyoming Conference the vil- 
lage and small town churches run up to 75 per cent. 

Not All Agricultural 

To many the term ^' rural" is synonymous with '^agri- 
cultural.'' But the agricultural rural work is not the only 
type of work for which the Department of Rural Work of 
the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension is 
responsible. There are the coal mines of Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the West ; the iron mines of the 
South and the North ; the copper mines of Michigan ; the oil 
fields of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, the coke villages 
and the many other forms of small industrial communities 
engaged in extraction of minerals. Over 1,000,000 miners in 



42 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

America, over half of whom are foreign horn and who 
represent a population of at least 3,000,000, do not have 
adequate religious services in the great task of assimilating 
them to American ideals. 

In the Coke Mission, in western Pennsylvania, over 100 
mining and coke villages were discovered representing a 
population of over 70,000 people which had no churches in 
them of any denomination, and it is reported that in some of 
them religious services can be held in schoolhouses but four 
months in the year. 

These communities are handicapped by the transient 
nature of the camps, poor adaptability of building needed 
to meet conditions in an agricultural or industrial village en- 
vironment, company control in many cases of church build- 
ing and program, poverty of wage earners, and transient 
type of population. All these conditions make a special de- 
mand upon the church not only to provide facilities imme- 
diately needed but also to preach a gospel of social justice 
and thrifty and wholesome living which will enable wage- 
earners to support their own institutions. 

The Negro demands still another type of service. Much 
of the religious service of the colored folks is now a preach- 
ing once a month by an absentee pastor. Trained leader- 
ship must be provided which will gradually overcome the 
handicap of illiteracy, immorality, superstition, poor health, 
lack of thrift, poverty, debt, political and economic discrimi- 
nation, and other handicaps under which the colored man 
now works. Methodism offers a program which has been 
tested and proven effective by the progress of the colored 
people in the New Orleans and other areas, and which has 
such a conspicuous illustration in the work being done on the 
Brookhaven District in Mississippi. 

Fifty-three per cent of the population of the United 
States is found in communities of this sort, and it is here 
that some of the greatest problems and the most distinctive 
challenges of the Christian Church are found. The chief 
problem is that of indifference, due in some cases to isola- 



THE EURAL CHURCH 43 

tion and in others to the individualistic tendencies of rural- 
minded folks. 

What a Rueal Survey Revealed 

A survey made on a Conference district, during the 
making of which a graduate student in rural economics 
spent nearly three months traveling over the district in an 
automobile, visiting every church and getting facts as to 
conditions not only in Methodist Episcopal churches, but 
also as to the interdenominational situation, revealed the 
fact that from the interdenominational point of view a very 
grave responsibility rests upon the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. It was found that there was very little interdenom- 
inational competition with organizations that represented 
a wholesome type of religious activity or cooperative spirit. 
In many places where interdenominational adjustments 
have been made, the spirit of willingness to get together and 
cooperate in a common religious organization was strong. 

But general discontent with religious service now being 
received exists, and there is a demand for better things. 
The church is represented by men in its ministry unfitted 
for their tasks because of insufficient training, dissipation 
of efforts through too extensive fields, or through having 
to engage in other occupations in order to earn a livelihood. 
The schools, farmers' organizations, and other rural 
agencies are making rapid progress toward greater effi- 
ciency, but the church, the representative of the deepest 
spiritual things of life, in many places lags behind. 

The Rural Home Mission Problem 

This survey demonstrated that the home mission prob- 
lem as related to rural life is a part of rural life as a whole. 
Dilapidated old schoolhouses, plasterless shell or log huts 
are no more conducive to live economic and religious con- 
ditions than are communities where, from a given point on 
Sunday morning, the sound of nine church bells can be heard 
all within a radius of a mile and a half. But the chief factor 



44 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

in the problem is indifference to the religious problems of 
the community as a whole. This is due in some cases to 
isolation and in others to the individualistic tendencies of 
rural life. Religion is strictly individualistic. To so many of 
these people it is still in the near-primitive form of super- 
stition. It is a thing that should be rather a magic help to 
an individual life rather than a practical uplifting agency 
for a community. There is no conception of social perfec- 
tion. A list of the varieties of religion found in the district 
studied indicates the individualism still prevalent : Apostolic 
Holiness, Baptist-Free Will; Baptist-Missionary; Baptist- 
Reg-ular; Baptist-United; Catholic- ( Roman ) ; Campbellite; 
Christian (often same as Campbellite); Christian Order; 
Christian Union ; Church of Christ in Christian Union ; Con- 
gregational (Welsh); Disciples; Dunkard; German Re- 
formed; Lutheran; Mormon (few); Methodist (Episcopal) 
Methodist (Protestant) ; Methodist (Calvinistic) ; Naza- 
rene; Presbyterian; United Brethren; United Brethren 
(Radical) ; others spoken of are Gravel Grinders, some- 
times identified as Campbellites. Twenty-six Dumb Tongu- 
ers (who speak in an unknown tongue) and Holy Rollers, 
sometimes called Christians. Twenty-seven Russellites and 
Friends were also found. It is very plain that religion is a 
personal affair, either you have *^got it" or you are 
damned eternally. Too often such faith has the only sure 
way to get to heaven. This places one, if he is of a different 
denomination, in an embarrassing position. 

Some Contkibutory Causes 

The particular section has apparently little to do with 
conditions existing in many rural communities, for on an- 
other district, in a section that in general is alive to all that 
is best in rural life and welfare, are found churches which 
are dying out or have been abandoned. In some instances 
it is purely the case of ancestral sinning in building too 
many churches in small communities in the years past. 
Time has not yet sufficiently reduced the number. To this 



THE BURAL CHUECH 45 

might be added the failure of those whose duty to the church 
is to support it adequately. There is on this same district 
a Methodist Episcopal church that has steadily declined for 
more than ten years, the building erected in 1870 with a 
seating capacity of one hundred and twenty-five being quite 
large enough to accommodate the thirty people who meet 
on alternate Sundays to hear the Word expounded. The 
forty-five members who represent twenty families, contri- 
bute one hundred dollars to pastoral support, which sum ap- 
pears to be as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians. 

Then there is the small country church which for vari- 
ous reasons has lost its constituency and cannot replace this 
with another strong and virile enough to continue its life 
and work. Other rural churches have been closed or are 
about to be closed as a result of the absentee landlord sys- 
tem. Tenant farmers are but temporary dwellers, and in 
a distressingly large number of instances have not actively 
identified themselves with religious work. The owners of 
the land, while getting their living from the farm, have usu- 
ally seen fit to support the church in the town or city where 
they reside. This leaves the old and unpretentious church 
house near the farm to fall into disrepair, and the rapidly 
disappearing membership to meet the bills for current ex- 
penses and ministerial support as best they can. At length, 
for lack of people and lack of funds, the doors are shut and 
the church which once pointed the wayfaring man and wo- 
man heavenward becomes but an unsightly landmark or a 
storehouse for some farmer's grain. 

Still other country churches are adjacent to a town 
which has larger and better houses of worship, and since a 
few miles more make little difference in these days of good 
roads and automobiles, families gradually drift to centers 
of population and so desert the country church. 

Apathy seems to be a prevailing difficulty in the isolated 
Massachusetts fishing village. The description of one such 
community reads like a page from The House of Seven 
Gables, which in turn was describing days long before its 



46 CHEISTIA^^ DEMOCRACY FOE AMERICA 

writing. In the early days it was a whaling port from which 
thirty-five whalers went to sea. With the going of the 
whaling business there was little business left. It is now 
getting to be a summer resort, with only about one hundred 
and seventy-five or one hundred and eighty people there dur- 
ing the winter. A typical old-fashioned Xew England vil- 
lage, with houses close to the road, and hardly a sidewalk 
and each house with a backyard and garden. The interest of 
the people has always been the sea. Tliey have been a small, 
isolated community. They do not like to see a dollar go out- 
side of the community. The spirit of the larger vision is 
beginning to reach them, however, so they are doing more 
than ever before for home and foreign missions. 

The Xeed of Rukal Vision 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has all through the 
years been at work in these rural communities. That it has 
not accomplished all that it might is not a matter for utter 
condemnation. Evolutionary jDrocesses are slow. The gen- 
eral acceptance of modern farm machinery was not brought 
about in a day. And since the church in years past held 
its mission to be that of calling men and women from the 
things of this life to preparation for a life beyond, any 
change of conception is slow of acceptance. That the church 
in the rural community should be the center of the life activ- 
ities of the community is a somewhat new idea. Rural so- 
ciologists have touched upon it and some church leaders 
have held it as a dream, but its actual acceptance by the peo- 
ple who are ' ' the problem ' ' is only of to-day, and this not in 
any widespread territory. Yet yearnings for it are now seen 
in the longing of farm men and women for a better type 
of life. 

When farm women are asked directly about their prob- 
lems they generally reply in one of three ways. The first 
group, those who have been fortunate in environment and 
opportunity for broader living, are well content with the 
sweet, joyous country life. The second group, and by far 




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48 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOE AMERICA 

the largest one, are women who by labor and strictest econ- 
omy raise their children, help their husbands in the monot- 
onous task of wresting a living from the soil, who ^*stay by 
the stuff '^ night and day and growing prematurely old in a 
hand-to-hand struggle with a situation far too difficult for 
the individual to master. The third group of women are 
helpless and despairing over a lot which seldom can be 
changed. They would like to have change and enjoyment, 
excitement and life, but they do not know how to go about 
getting what they want, nor do they realize that fundamen- 
tally the solution rests with themselves. The day of vision is 
far oif for these last. 

"What joy or hope does the farmer *s wife receive on 
Sunday morning as she tries to keep a pew full of children 
quiet the while the minister discourses on the delights of the 
New Jerusalem? All week she has prepared three meals a 
day for hungry men, washed the dishes, washed and ironed 
the clothes, kept the house clean and orderly, fed the pigs 
and the chickens, helped with the milking, churned, gathered 
the eggs, pumped the water, taken care of ^ve heating stoves 
besides the kitchen range (with two of the stoves upstairs). 
The poetic quotation from ^'The Old Oaken Bucket** (fifty 
feet down a well, waiting to be drawn up with a windlass 
and rope) is all lost on her. She is tired and will be glad 
when service is over and she can talk with the other women 
about storage tanks, hot-water boilers, windmills, hot-water 
or furnace heat, home lighting plants, gasoline-run washing 
machines, wringers, separators, churns, and vacuum clean- 
ers. She wants to know the possibilities of sending Bill and 
Mary to college on the egg money — she does not want them 
to have the drudgery of the farm. What, besides the ser- 
mon, is the church going to give her that she may look to the 
church for guidance ? 

The Rural. Church Member Challenged 

Here and there there have been rural lay leaders who 
have seen the need of what the new day in rural life and wor- 



THE EURAL CHURCH 49 

ship is bringing. But the vision of church leaders, a few 
rural pastors and an occasional rural layman, will not bring 
to pass the full promise of the hope for a rural life centering 
in the worship of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ 
radiating out from the church into all the community, a serv- 
ice to the last individual according to his need. Along with 
the new vision and the present helpful developments in rural 
religious life comes a sharp challenge to every rural church 
member. The intense group spirit must be broken up. 
What odds is it to the Kingdom that we are Norwegian or 
Greek? That the Jacksons, Burns, and our family all came 
to Beaverville from Lay ton's Point back East? Will the 
Master give us rating as landlord, tenant, or laborer? Are 
the Baptists or Congregationalists or Episcopalians or 
Methodists each to have a special consideration when they 
listen to hear it said, *^Well done'*? Shall the non-church- 
goer be classed outside the pale as we pray God's blessing 
on our family, our land, our stock, our church? Must the 
newcomer into the community establish a social status be- 
fore we welcome him to God's house? 

Are we as keen to have as well-qualified rural religious 
leadership as we ask in our industrial leaders ? Do we aim 
to have a church thoroughly equipped for service to the 
entire community? Are we asking for a first-class ministry 
and paying for second and third class? Do we make it 
necessary for our pastor to put in half time at blacksmith- 
ing, farming, or shoe-cobbling in order to provide for the 
legitimate needs of himself and his family? Are we mak- 
ing our church plant available for community use ? 

A Sense of Rukal, Woeth 

The rural layman as well as the rural pastor must have 
a clear view of the fundamental aspects of the rural problem 
and broadly define the relationship of the church to that 
problem. The rural work in the church has suffered with 
so many other phases of rural life in having been out- 
stripped in its progress during the past sixty or more years 



50 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

by tlie suburban and city church. With rare exceptions it 
has given of its best to the leadership of city and suburban 
churches and has fallen so in the scale of public estimation 
that church officials and ministers themselves look upon 
being taken from the rural work as a promotion. Rural 
people have tacitly accepted this estimate of their own insti- 
tutions by allowing their best pastors to be taken from them, 
and by moving from the country to the city when seeking for 
themselves better life. Loyalty to rural life must be instilled 
into people and leaders, and the rural work must be put upon 
a plane of equality with all other work in dignity and influ- 
ence. The accepted tradition among farmers that they can- 
not have the services of the best of the church because of 
poverty, must be broken down. 

Salaky and Leadekship 

Without doubt the question of adequate remuneration 
for the rural pastor is a large item in the problem of bring- 
ing the best sort of rural ministry to the rural community. 
A recent study shows that out of a total of 18,307 Method- 
ist Episcopal charges in America 12,004 are rural, in com- 
munities of less than 2,500 inhabitants. Of the total number 
of rural charges, 2,308 have salaries of $400 a year or less ; 
1,499 pay salaries of from $400 to $600; 1,905, $600 to $800; 
2,093, $800 to $1,000; 1,799, $1,000 to $1,200; 2,027, $1,200 or 
over. On 373 charges no figures are available. These sta- 
tistics include colored and foreign-speaking as well as Eng- 
lish-speaking Conferences. A significant fact brought out 
is that there are more pastors in the $400-a-year group than 
in any other salary classification. 

This situation creates an almost insurmountable diffi- 
culty. A college and seminary-trained young man who has 
some educational obligations to meet after the end of his 
days of training, cannot afford to go into a rural commu- 
nity. For he must have books ; he must have some opportu- 
nity for seeing other sections of the country besides his own 
village. His wife enjoys pretty clothes as much as do the 



THE RURAL CHURCH 51 

wives of the trustees of the church. Frequently she is a col- 
lege girl with all of the vision of the dreams of college days, 
but this is what she actually sees : Four hundred dollars a 
year and a square, bandbox-shaped parsonage, with a parlor 
carpet that shrieks at you the minute you open the door ; a 
kitchen stove that gasses so that she must cook her meals 
with a wet towel tied around her mouth and nose, cracks 
under the front door that let in snow in the winter; a 
squeaky pump outside of the house which groans an occa- 
sional bucketfull of water up from the cistern ; ice to break 
in the washbowl in the morning of a winter's day — and the 
four hundred dollars paid in such dilatory manner that even 
the joy of spending this small amount is lost. 

Can we ever hope to have the rural minister paid an 
adequate salary? On the same district where such dismal 
conditions were found, a statesmanlike district superintend- 
ent has already brought to pass a considerable increase of 
salary for his ministers. This whole living problem involves 
an equity in rural and urban standards of living, the con- 
sideration of the rural pastor as in service equally as im- 
portant as any other in the church by bishops, district super- 
intendents, and ministers. 

Living on the Job 

The Knight of the Saddle Bag and the Circuit System 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church have been praised in 
song and story, and rightly so. For the combination was the 
great power of early Methodism. It is to-day in some 
places. Yet theoretically, no man can handle a community 
effectively if he spreads himself out over other places, and 
a circuit is always a stretched-out ministry. But the circuit 
system to-day is not nearly as widespread as some might 
think. An average of the Conferences shows the circuit 
charges to have from 1 to 4 preaching points. A Meth- 
odist Episcopal minister in central Tennessee serves twenty- 
one points, while a retired minister between seventy-five and 
eighty years of age in Oregon has a circuit of sixty-four 



52 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

schoolhouses. In many places the circuit system can be done 
away with to advantage. Many of the circuit points could 
support a man if they were alive to the opportunity and chal- 
lenge which the community offers to the leadership of the 
church. The rural pastor who is solving the problem of the 
rural community, which differs from that of his city brother 
fundamentally in the matter of organization rather than in 
the people, lives on the job. He is making the church a vital- 
izing and fundamental agency for rural redirection and the 
rural religious problem has responded so finely to the steady 
leadership of a wise settled pastor that the challenge is com- 
manding the attention of the church. There are sections of 
the country, however, where the circuit system must be en- 
couraged. 

Larger results will accrue when the community rather 
than the ministry is the first consideration in making ap- 
pointments at the sessions of the Annual Conferences. Of 
course this involves an esprit de corps among the leadership 
and ministry of the church developed on the assurance of a 
democracy of talent in the matter of appointment, promo- 
tion, and similar relationships. If a man feels that the ac- 
ceptance of a $400 rural appointment forever places him in 
the $400 classification, he very justly might object to taking 
such appointment, and could not be blamed if he spent some 
time thinking how he might get an opportunity to ^^move." 
The Board of Home Missions and Church Extension should 
aid in supporting pastors serving charges now paying low 
salaries because of poor service or of undeveloped resources 
until they can be brought to self-support. The best min- 
isters in Methodism should be found in the hardest places. 

A great deal is written and said these days about the 
necessity of a long pastorate in city churches. The need is 
no less urgent in the rural community. A minister must be 
in a place long enough to become known, to know the people, 
to become a part of the community life, to be trusted in 
matters of judgment concerning community affairs, right- 
fully to grow into a place of leadership which will be recog- 



THE RURAL CHURCH 53 

nized and followed. There are some places where men have 
stayed a lifetime in a rural parish. They have thus become 
a dominating influence in the lives of most of the people who 
have been a part of the community during the years. 

Is THE RUEAL FlELD MISSIONARY? 

The development of the missionary spirit among the 
ministry in rural work is essential, and this in order that 



WHY MINISTERS LEAVE THE COUNTRY 

WHITE RURAL MIN6TERS* SALARIES 
INCLUDING PARSONAGE 

Under|800 |800-I200 

41200 or more 
per Year 




they will work for those things which they recognize as lack- 
ing in rural life which they believe other communities enjoy. 
This raises the question as to whether rural work is really 
missionary work in so far as it has the task of bringing the 
whole of life to the rural community. 

It is the task of the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church to aid 
rural communities in the efficient development of the reli- 
gious life they need to conserve the best elements of a safe 



54 CHEISTIAX DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

civilization. It must help to stimulate that love for the best 
things which unrestrained economic life is apt to lose. It 
must preserve that recognition of man's dependence upon 
divinity which is so essential an element in any civilization 
and without which civilization is apt to be hollow, false, and 
without an abiding hope to protect it from the deterioration 
which has marked jDagan civilizations throughout all history. 

One cause for failure on the part of the rural church in 
the past has been its lack of emphasis upon life as a whole. 
It failed to recognize that a wholesome religious life will not 
be found in an inferior economic and social environment. 
All must be developed together. The church should be 
recognized as the great community leader in civilization. 

The business of the church so far as rural life is con- 
cerned is to aid in bringing rural folk back again to that 
standard of dignity and importance they once held, and to 
bring to the uttermost corners of the open country those 
conditions which make possible the purpose of the Master 
when he said, ''I am come that they might have life, and 
that they might have it more abundantly." The economic 
problems of the farmer have been largely solved. But the 
enrichment of rural life with wholesome forms of expression 
still awaits the leadership of the church. And unless the 
church performs its duty, increased wealth may lead to mean 
deterioration of the American people instead of becoming a 
blessing. 

Some Necessaey Adjustments 

Better organization to meet changed conditions result- 
ing from shifts in population must be instituted. Over- 
churching and interdenominational competition must be 
overcome. Lay leadership must be again encouraged. In 
meeting the interdenominational situation it is found that 
the union church is not favored by any denomination. It 
is self-centered and has no missionary viewpoint. Trading 
off — that is, a Baptist and a Methodist Episcopal church 
swapping the field in two different places, the Baptists to 



THE EURAL CHURCH 



55 



give up the work entirely to the Methodist Episcopal con- 
gregation at A and the Methodist Episcopal church to give 
up the work entirely to the Baptist congregation in B — has 
proved successful. Federation is desirable where trading 
off or merging into one denomination is not possible. The 
weakness in this form of meeting the problem from the 
Methodist Episcopal point of view lies in the conflict be- 



WHY MINISTERS LEAVE THE COUNTRY 


RURAL COLORED MINISTERS* SALARIES 


INCLUDING PARSONAGE 




Under$400 
per Year 




/ \ $4004600 
/ \ per Year 

/ 87Z \ / \ 


$600-$800 

per Year . 

over$800 

/\ perVear 


/ \ / ^^'' \ 


/'57\A 





tween the principle of connectional organization represented 
by Methodism and the congregational polity resulting from 
federation. 

The afl&liated membership plan now in use on the Eock 
Island District is proving to be very successful. It appears 
to be specially suited to all communities in which Method- 
ism has the predominant responsibility, but which contain 
members of other churches who do not care to give up their 
membership in their own denominations. It is a distinct 
contribution to the solution of the problem of interdenomina- 



56 CHEISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOR AMERICA 

tional competition because it does not destroy the connec- 
tional organization. The result of the affiliated membership 
plan is awaited with interest. 

Tkaining a Rural Ministry 

When all is said, the success of a rural pastorate de- 
pends upon the rural pastor. He must be rurally trained for 
his task. The sending of young ministers to rural com- 
munities for their first parishes as a sort of training for city 
work, has gone on almost indefinitely. The young preacher 
has gained some experience, the church in the country has 
learned the virtue of patience, but it is doubtful if successive 
pastors of this sort have left anything very definite in the 
life of the rural community. To-day the need for a specially 
trained rural minister is seen. To meet this demand an 
adequate system of recruiting and training for the rural 
ministry is necessary. This is being m.et in part by the 
chairs of rural sociology in our theological seminaries and 
the rural institutes and conferences held by the Department 
of Rural Work of the Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

But the need is greater than the supply. Hundreds of 
leaders must be trained for the complex task of present lead- 
ership. Supplies must be displaced by trained men in full 
standing in Conference relationships. The vision of the 
great task to be performed by the minister in the rural com- 
munity must be given to those who are still thinking in 
terms of church life of a generation ago, and a challenge 
must be given to the young life of our colleges to enlist them- 
selves in the service of rural people. The service rendered 
by the rural pastor is as necessary to American civilization 
as that which is done in any other part of our social organ- 
ization. With the proper recognition of the opportunity for 
both Kingdom and community service in the rural pastorate 
he will enter the rural community with that same enthusiasm 
that has characterized thousands of volunteers for foreign 
service. The challenge is a commanding one. The church is 



THE RURAL CHURCH 57 

beginning to create the motive, tlie spirit and the power of 
leadership in the rural church. It is not only preaching, but 
is also equipping its Sunday school for a modern religious 
education. It is also cooperating sympathetically with 
every movement for scientific home-making, for lightening 
the work in the farmhouse, for the bringing of music and 
literature, the right kind of recreation and social life, within 
the reach of every member of the community in terms of his 
or her own special needs. 

Cooperation with the Government 

The results of a small investment by the Board of 
Home Missions and Church Extension of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in work being done by District Superin- 
tendent M. T. J. Howard, one of the leaders in the develop- 
ment of the rural Negro communities of the South under 
Bishop W. P. Thirkield's leadership, are seen in the follow- 
ing quotation from his report for the Brookhaven District 
of the Mississippi Conference at the Annual Conference : 

**In addition to food conservation, the leader in demon- 
stration work gave special attention to increased produc- 
tion, working together, and health preservation. His report 
showed that he traveled 220 miles, visited 12 churches, or- 
ganized 15 clubs, as follows : 3 tomato, 3 potato, 4 corn, 4 
poultry, 1 industrial and economic. For this work he was 
paid $25 a month, traveling expenses being paid by those 
whom he served. The leader in charge of women's club 
work was to give public demonstration of food conservation. 
Her report showed that she traveled 263 miles by rail and 
73 by team ; worked two months, gave public demonstrations, 
reached 1,400 housewives and canned personally 2,488 
pounds of food. For this work she received $25 a month. 
Her board and traveling expenses were provided by the 
com_munities in which she labored. As a result of this co- 
operation and of other activities on the part of the district 
superintendent, over 8,000 pounds of meat and 50,000 
pounds of canned goods were saved. Five hundred and 



58 CHKISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOE AMERICA 

fifty-five boys were enrolled in corn and other clubs and 263 
girls in tomato-canning and poultry clubs. Rural reading 
clubs were organized and plans made for the purchase of 
forty acres of land to be used as a district headquarters and 
as a place for a retired ministers ' home. On this land will 
be carried on agricultural demonstration activities and will 
be located the rural folk High School for colored people. ' ' 

A RuKAL Chukch Pkogeam 

It is the rural church with a program that wins. In 
response to repeated calls for a program for rural churches, 
the Department of Rural Work of the Board of Home Mis- 
sions and Church Extension, in cooperation with bishops, 
district superintendents, and pastors, has prepared the fol- 
lowing outline. 

1. Survey of at least one point or charge. Point to be 
selected according to its availability for a community pro- 
gram. When the district is divided into parishes the entire 
parish should be surveyed. 

2. When the survey is completed, locate the home of 
each member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and of all 
who prefer the Methodist Episcopal Church, and all who 
have no church preference, on the map that will be furnished 
you, by dot or small circle. These dots or small circles 
should be numbered to correspond with the cards containing 
the names of the occupants of the homes, and such other 
data as may be gathered in making the survey. 

3. Work for a banner Sunday school in every church 
the year round. Introduce the Partnership Plan gotten out 
by the Board of Sunday Schools. It will greatly increase 
the offerings of your Sunday schools to the Board of Home 
Missions and Church Extension, the Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions, and the Board of Sunday Schools. The money se- 
cured in this way will apply on your regular benevolent 
apportionments. 

4. Work for the raising in full of all apportionments in 
benevolences. 



THE EURAL CHURCH 59 

5. Introduce the disciplinary financial drive for each 
church. 

6. Organize a Family Altar League. If you are not 
familiar with this organization, inquire of the district super- 
intendent. We must make an effort to cultivate family reli- 
gion. 

7. A home improvement campaign some time during the 
year, probably during the spring. 

8. A campaign for the improvement of every church 
property, as follows : 

(a) Clean up every churchyard and burying-ground. 
(h) See that every church building is painted. 

(c) See that windows, stoves, furnaces, seats, papering, 
everything needed to make the building comfortable and at- 
tractive, is in good condition. 

(d) Plant trees where they are lacking. Landscape the 
churchyard. Set out shrubbery. Plant flowers in the 
spring. Keep the lawn properly mowed. 

(e) If your churches are in villages or communities 
where the effort would be justified, lay out tennis courts, 
croquet grounds, basket-ball grounds, etc. 

(/) Toilets in the churches or in the churchyards so 
located and beautified as not to be offensive. 

(g) Horse or automobile sheds where necessary. 

(h) Coal or woodsheds at every church. 

(i) Parsonages comfortable and habitable, with lawns 
well kept and landscaped. 

(j) Keep cemeteries in good condition. Organize a 
cemetery association, if necessary. 

(k) Individual communion cups. Communion table 
and linen. 

(I) Methodist Hymnals in every church. 

(m) See that property is properly insured. 

9. Make your churches the center of the social life of 
the community. Plan social functions for your young peo- 
ple. Organize boys' clubs. Keep something doing in your 
churches all the time. Make much of the great religious 



60 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

festivals, such as Christmas, Easter, etc. Cooperate with 
other agencies in community organization. 

10. A rural study class in each church for training 
leaders for conventional church work and for leaders of 
community service. Special evening courses during the 
winter have been found profitable. 

11. Develop all phases of evangelistic eifort recom- 
mended by the Department of Evangelism of the Board of 
Home Missions and Church Extension. Write for literature. 

12. Take an active interest in Farmers' Institutes and 
other rural organizations. Attend public sales, that you 
may meet strangers and become better acquainted with the 
men of your community. Take a farm journal. 

13. If no adequate library exists, introduce the circulat- 
ing library that can be secured free of cost from the State 
university, or State library in most States. 

14. It may be profitable to arrange a course of lectures 
on ^ * Good Housekeeping, ' ' ^ ' Farming, ' ' etc. 

15. It would be well to invest in a stereopticon. Slides 
can be secured at a nominal cost. Many can be secured 
entirely free of cost. You can make these stereopticon lec- 
tures highly beneficial. Write to the Rural Department, 
Board of Home Missions and Church Eixtension, for in- 
formation as to sources of illustrative material. 

16. During the summer vacation organize a Religious 
Day School. Such a school can be conducted profitably for a 
period of from two to five weeks. The Bible should be the 
chief study in the Religious Day School. 

17. Divide your entire parish into sections. Have a 
superintendent of each section, whose duty it shall be to 
report to you the names of the new people who may move 
into the community, the names of the sick, and all other 
matters of importance with which you should be familiar. 

18. Organize a pastor's visiting committee of from six 
to ten women in each church community, to visit at least one 
afternoon each week, under your direction. Special effort 
should be made where a tenant or other transient popula- 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



61 



tion should be reached. In this way the poor, the sick, the 
strangers, and the shut-ins will be given proper attention. 

19. Organize a band of personal workers in every 
church, whose duty it shall be to seek out those who have not 




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62 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

affiliated with the church, and to give you any valuable in- 
formation that you may need concerning the spiritual state 
of those with whom they may come in contact. 

20. Select a few silent workers in each church, who shall 
befriend the poor, the neglected, the sinful, and those re- 
cently saved, with a view of helping them up in the com- 
munity. These workers should be selected without the 
knowledge of anyone but the pastor, and should work under 
his direction. Just a little personal attention will often start 
a man on the highway of salvation. 

21. Use all righteous means to lift your community and 
your entire parish up to the highest state of moral, indus- 
trial, social, and spiritual efficiency. 

22. Above all, determine to make your sermons on the 
Sabbath scriptural, spiritual, and inspirational. No secular 
theme should be allowed to sidetrack a gospel message on 
the Lord's Day. 

23. For the sake of greater effectiveness in community 
action, let all ministers on the district work together at some 
time, previously agreed upon, under the direction of the 
district superintendent in accordance with plans formed by 
an interdenominational comity committee, for the following : 

(a) A county farm bureau in each county. 

(b) A county welfare bureau in each county. 

(c) An effective community organization in every com- 
munity. 

(d) A county library system in every county. 

(e) Boys' and girls' club work of such kinds as are 
adapted to local conditions. 

(/) Community health campaigns. 

(g) Home economics campaigns. 

(h) Care of the unfortunate classes in county homes, 
lockups, jails, insane asylums. 

That a program is needed does not need to be argued. 
The first essential, however, is the making of a survey. This 
may be done very simply. The Department of Rural Work 
of the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension of the 



THE EURAL CHURCH 63 

Methodist Episcopal Church has issued a ^^ Rural Home 
Survey'^ which can be used to secure the data absolutely 
necessary for beginning the work. 

On a number of Conference districts promising rural 
charges have been selected by the Department of Rural 
Work with the aim to assist it in reaching the highest pos- 
sible efficiency. Here trained rural ministers are assisted 
both financially and with guidance by the Board. It is hoped 
through this help in special places to develop a large number 
of rural churches to recognized leadership in the community. 
As rapidly as such charges attain desired standards, the 
help will be transferred to other charges. 

RUKAL MiNISTEES' ASSOCIATION 

The Rural Missionary Society is helping to coordinate 
and assist financially the Rural Work of some Annual Con- 
ferences. The purpose of such societies is to assist in main- 
taining and extending work in needy and hopeful fields 
within the bounds of the Conference. 

In the Rock River Conference about twenty preaching 
points receive help on the pastor's salary each year. The 
organization is also responsible for stimulating interest in 
the best things of rural life. 

The North-East Ohio Conference Rural Ministers' 
Association is the outcome of a feeling of need for fellowship 
and inspiration of the men in the rural ministry. It serves 
as a clearing house for the best plans and methods in rural 
church work. 

At the Annual Conference each year an exhibit of rural 
church work has been prepared and set up by this associa- 
tion. An exhibit secretary collects the best available mate- 
rials during the year and every rural pastor is urged to 
bring pictures, charts, parish surveys and maps, advertising 
samples, and other material for the exhibit. The Exhibit 
room is the headquarters of the rural ministers during the 
Annual Conference and the exchange of ideas and plans is 
frequent and beneficial. 



64 CHEISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOR AMERICA 

The Association is granted an hour on the Conference 
program, and each year some expert in rural church work 
has been secured for an address. The most profitable ses- 
sion was one in which six ministers of the Conference told 
briefly what they had accomplished in the rural field. On 
one occasion a banquet was held by the Association with the 
presiding bishop as speaker. Informal luncheon confer- 
ences are held and an effort is made to discover the rural 
ministers who are working along constructive and modern 
lines. 

There is a secretary of the Association in each district 
whose business it is to collect and forward exhibit material 
to the exhibit secretary. In addition it is the duty of this 
secretary to discover promising rural pastors in the district 
and encourage them to make the country their lifework. It 
is the particular work of each district secretary to see to it 
that the work of the rural church is given consideration in 
the District Conference program. 

The results of this effort are difficult to measure. The 
main result is the rapidly changing attitude of the rural min- 
isters toward their work. Many rural pastors are catching a 
vision of the opportunities in the rural parish and many are 
dedicating their lives to this field. There is a group of men 
in the North-East Ohio Conference who have determined 
to give the best of their years to the rural churches and their 
determination and efficiency are due largely to the Rural 
Ministers' Association. 

A Depaetment of Ruhal Woek 

The day of the rural church is dawning. The last Gen- 
eral Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, May, 
1916, in providing for the Department of Rural Work also 
stipulated what its task should be. With the whole church 
back of this program, another generation will see the life 
of our rural coromunities all full of the hope of the Son of 
God. The task of the department is : 

To make surveys in rural church fields in order to ascer- 



THE RURAL CHURCH 65 

tain their resources and needs, and to determine the centers 
where permanent church enterprises might be established 
which would serve the whole community. 

To apportion such funds as may be appropriated for 
this purpose to strategic centers widely distributed through- 
out the country for a given period of years and thus to 
demonstrate the service such a church enterprise can render. 

To recommend to the responsible organizations cases 
where denominational exchanges should be made and where 
cooperative or federated plans could be worked out to pre- 
vent overlapping by competing denominations, and also to 
point out where churches of our own denomination should be 
united. 

To promote the study of rural sociology among our min- 
isters, and in our colleges and theological schools, and to 
plan complete courses of study in our denominational col- 
leges for the preparation of those who catch the vision and 
feel the call to life work in the rural field. 

To cooperate with the allies of the church in the great 
task of improving the economic, social, educational, and reli- 
gious life of the people in the rural sections. 

To have such further powers and duties as will help to 
keep our church fully abreast of the best thought and ex- 
pression of the day concerning rural life. 

Methodism must ever remember that her heritage is 
rural; that over 12,000 of her 18,300 charges are in com- 
munities of less than 2,500 inhabitants ; that her strength is 
recruited to-day in her rural churches ; that her ministry and 
the leadership of the nation come from the country. Let 
those who have come from the country remember the source 
from whence they have come, and in their planning for the 
larger service the church must render to the present and 
coming generations they must also remember to guard and 
provide for the welfare of the rural church in the hour of 
its crisis. If this is not done, Methodism will lose her op- 
portunity for service both in city and country. If it is done, 
Methodism will continue to rest on a firm foundation of 



66 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

loyalty and true religious life and will be in a position to 
reclaim not only the great cities but the world. 



Questions foe Discussion 

1. What part has Methodism had in ministering to 
rural communities? 

2. What is meant by ^ ^ rural ' ' ? Illustrate. 

3. Describe the results of the Rural Service Study? 
What do you know personally of rural conditions? 

4. State the Rural Home Mission Problem and discuss 
some contributing causes. 

5. How may one get rural vision? 

6. Show how failure to retain a sense of rural worth 
has handicapped rural church work. 

7. To what extent are salary and leadership related? 
How well are rural Methodist Episcopal ministers paid? 

8. Compare the circuit system with the resident pas- 
torate. 

9. Where shall we get a trained rural minister ? 

10. What would you put into a rural church program? 

11. How may rural ministers' associations help de- 
velop rural consciousness? 

12. Describe the aims of the Department of Rural 
Work of the Board of Home Missions and Church Exten- 
sion of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



Ill 

THE IMMIGRANT— A CHANGING PROBLEM OF 

HOME MISSIONS 



CHAPTER III 

THE IMMIGRANT— A CHANGING PROBLEM 
OF HOME MISSIONS 

The problem of immigration as viewed by America is 
to-day a disconcerting, shifting, and changing problem. 
EK^ery year new and more complex conditions arise. Within 
one decade alone the type and racial characteristics of the 
immigrant have entirely changed, and the methods and plans 
of home missionary forces have been established, revolution- 
ized, reestablished, and revolutionized again. 

The * * E AKLiEB ' ' Immigkation 

In the comparatively recent years when English, Scotch, 
Celtic, French, German, and Scandinavian families flocked 
to America as home-seekers the process of assimilation was 
practically imperceptible. American ideals soon found root 
in the minds of these people. The Scandinavians particu- 
larly have distributed themselves in just such sections of the 
United States where they are of the most economic value to 
the country in the production of food supplies. 

On the landing of these immigrants, known as the ^ ^ ear- 
lier ' ' type, our country aided them by protecting them from 
exploitation. But our temporary responsibility soon ceased 
and millions of people of the best stock of northern Europe 
melted into the great American democracy and became an 
integral part of the nation of their adoption. Those were 
the halcyon days for the immigration officials. 

Methodism Helps 

The church found a comparatively easy task in meeting 
the spiritual needs of these immigrants that logically came 
vwithin her influence. Roman Catholicism kept pace with th« 

67 



68 CHRISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOR AMERICA 

Celtic-Irish influx and Protestantism made remarkable 
strides in caring for the other British peoples, as they did 
also for Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, and Germans. In all of 
this work Methodism stood in the front rank. She met the 
immigrant at Ellis Island ; she cared for his temporal needs 
until he was self-supporting, and later built churches for 
him, and even in some cases published religious journals in 
his own tongue. This was the extent of the task of the Board 
of Home Missions and Church Extension in Americanizing 
and evangelizing the alien. 

The spirit of Methodism is intensely democratic and 
this great denomination is peculiarly fitted to develop an 
environment and create favorable conditions for the better- 
ment of the people within her borders irrespective of race or 
color. 

In the days of the '* earlier immigration" the point of 
contact between the church and the stranger was easy to 
find. Home life in the case of each nation was much alike. 
The newcomer was of high intelligence, thrifty, progressive, 
and adaptable. There existed little or no racial and political 
prejudice. 

The *' Later'' Immigration 

Rapidly and steadily there has been a radical change in 
the flow of immigration, which increased in volume up to 
the time of the outbreak of the present world war. The 
change was most marked in racial type, and the new immi- 
grant presents not only a complex problem to our national 
legislators, but constitutes a new and tremendous challenge 
to the church. The new peoples have been coming from 
Southern Europe and include also the whole range of the 
Iberic division of classification, such as Spanish, Portu- 
guese, and Basques. 

Illiteracy Thwarts Home Missions 

The first point that constitutes a difficulty for the church 
in coping with her responsibility, is the illiteracy of the new 



THE IMMIGRANT 69 

immigration. Where there is illiteracy on the part of even 
one party, prejudice and mutual misunderstanding are likely 
to result. There is less of common ground in any relation, 
and greater divergence of thought. Until the church under- 
stands the character and customs of the heterogeneous peo- 
ples coming to our shores to engage in unskilled labor, she 
cannot be a channel of enlightenment to them. Methodism, 
however, is changing her methods of approach, and is adapt- 
ing herself, but the Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension is sadly handicapped in launching a comprehen- 
sive program, devised on progressive lines, because of the 
lack of interest and support on the part of the rank and file 
of membership of the church. 

Tenement Life, Another Difficulty 

The tendency on the part of Italians, Greeks, and others 
of the later type of immigrants to crowd into city tenements, 
where they preserve old ideals and traditions, constitutes 
a further difficulty that has to be met by Protestants in an 
attempt to do for the southern European what has been suc- 
cessfully accomplished for the Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon, and 
Scandinavian immigrant. 

Diversity of Language, and Irreligion a Further Barrier 

There is a diversity of languages spoken and very gen- 
erally a religious background — a product of Roman Catho- 
licism — that erects a barrier against evangelical effort. No 
attempt is made to undermine the work of the Church of 
Eome by Methodist home missionaries, but these people 
have practically abandoned their church and little is done 
by their ecclesiastical authorities to make their lot more en- 
durable, or assist them to higher ideals of citizenship. 

Such conditions are more clearly noted in the '* Little 
Italies" of American cities. But the people called Czechs — 
Slavs of Bohemia — rapidly break allegiance with the Vati- 
can on their arrival in the '* Promised Land" and often 
suffer a reaction toward irreligion that gives a still different 



70 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

phase to the difficulties of home missionary work among 
these particular immigrants. 

The Czechs and Feeedom 

Perhaps because of their history, few people coming to 
this country imbibe the ideals of freedom with greater rapid- 
ity than the Czechs, and here probably lies the point of con- 
tact with Protestantism. As an evidence of this spirit, the 
Bohemians who have found a haven in America from the 
arrogance of Austria, are now recruiting regiment after 
regiment in Canada and the United States, willing to sacri- 
fice even unto death for the ideals of freedom in the fight 
against the Dual Monarchy. 

Ebb Tide 

The present rate of immigration is comparatively low, 
about 80 per cent being Mexican, Portuguese, and other 
Latin Americans. There is no doubt as to the cause of this ; 
the effect of the war is not more evident in any department 
of religious work than in that of the church's effort to min- 
ister to the needs of the immigrant. 

GrATHERING THE FoRCES OF MeTHODISM 

This alteration of conditions that stems the human tide 
pouring unto our shores and borders is welcomed by some 
Christian people as a providential opportunity given to the 
church to gather her forces for a new attack upon the prob- 
lems that will present themselves at the end of the war in 
Europe. Most certainly, if preparation is not made at this 
time, there will be no possibility of adequately meeting the 
needs for many years after peace has been established upon 
the earth. If the present rate of immigration is negligible, 
the future will show unprecedented drives upon our shores 
by people seeking admission to the Christian America. 
Practically all authorities are agreed upon this point: the 
conclusion is obvious that the most critical period in the his- 
iDTi/ of home missions is at hand, .. : •.;::- 



72 CHEISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOR AMEEICA 

A few have advanced the hope that a speedy reconstruc- 
tion in Europe will be effected, and thus will be prevented a 
great influx of undesirable elements from the war-torn coun- 
tries. This hope, however, is not justified by reason; and 
experience has given us every evidence that the problems of 
immigration will never be as vexing as when the nations 
seek to adjust the changed order of things due to making the 
world safe for democracy. 

The Factors Goveening Emigration 
Expulsive and Attractive 

The two prime factors that govern emigration will be 
stronger than ever before in the years to come. The devas- 
tation of the old country will be the chief expulsive factor 
and the settled and prosperous condition of the United 
States will constitute the attractive element in the exodus. 

Economic Conditions 

Economic conditions abroad are certain to be less favor- 
able to a permanent population than heretofore, and eco- 
nomic causes loom large among the expulsive factors under 
any circumstances of emigration. Industry is not only al- 
most at a standstill in most of the warring countries, but war 
has destroyed the possibility of reestablishing many of these 
lands until a long period of rehabilitation has ensued. Al- 
ready, we are told, between fifteen million and twenty mil- 
lion men have been taken from the mills in Europe. Mean- 
time, skilled artizans who escape the physical dangers of 
war, will seek employment in America at the only task to 
which they have devoted a lifetime of work. 

Political Conditions 

Next in order of importance will be the political reasons 
for emigration. A free country is a paradise greatly to be 
desired by those who have been nurtured under any system 
akin to autocracy. The fear of possible future wars, con- 



THE IMMIGRANT 73 

scription in its least appealing form, and the sharp demar- 
cation between classes — all these are significant possibilities 
that have to be faced by the less fortunate classes of the 
countries of Europe. 

Social. Conditions 

Social conditions constitute a third expulsive factor. 
Not only does class distinction engender an unjust balance 
of political power, but it leads to unfair distribution of mate- 
rial welfare. The European peasant, oppressed by absentee 
landlordism, hears of comfortable homes and high wages in 
America and contrasts his present lot with the opportunities 
of seeking a job overseas in the ^4and of the free and the 
home of the brave.'' When he can afford the passage he 
launches out to seek his fortune where social conditions 
more nearly coincide with his dreams of peace. The war 
will have destroyed the hearth of his fathers, and taxes will 
be so increased that in self-defense he must emigrate. 

There are still to be considered racial motives; and, 
more particularly, spiritual motives. For example, the con- 
dition of Armenia is intolerable to-day. The day will never 
dawn, however, when torture, insult, and death will crush 
the faith and spiritual zeal of these people ! But if America 
opens her doors to them, here will be a haven from the 
bloody scimitar of the Turk. There will be many survivors 
who now owe their very lives to the generous impulses of the 
American people, and these oppressed ones will flock to the 
shores where Liberty holds aloft her torch — the symbol of 
religious freedom for all. 

The Fokces of Attraction 

To all of these expulsive forces add the attractive force, 
such as glowing letters concerning prosperity, from rela- 
tives who have reached America ; steamship fares advanced 
by loved ones ; opportunity for adequate education for their 
children; and the reason for the expectation on the part of 



74 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

immigration officials of the unparalleled influx to America 
is not difficult to understand. 

Am I My Bkother's Keeper? 

As Christians looking toward a comprehensive and con- 
structive program of world-service, the problems of the 
*^new immigration*' are not only our challenge to action, but 
an inspiration to sacrifice. 

As It Touches Us 

Hpw, then, do the conditions we have mentioned appeal 
to and afPect us ? Before we proceed to put the facts upon 
the basis of an appeal to the highest motives of the church, 
we will look at the matter from a purely selfish standpoint. 

Disease 

While the incoming hordes of southern Europeans flock 
to this country, they carry with them untold possibilities for 
the introduction of pestilential diseases, and this in spite of 
all the precautions humanly possible, that are observed at 
our ports of entry, such as Ellis Island, Los Angeles, and El 
Paso. If we would safeguard public health, we should take 
an active interest in the sources of probable contamination. 
The larger the crowds are, the less individual care can be 
taken in the matter of medical examination. The barriers 
that our nation raises or lowers to the immigrant have to be 
considered by the citizen on other than the grounds of emo- 
tional charity. 

The War for a Wage 

Almost as serious results will be evident in economic 
conditions at home if the wounded and crippled European 
soldiers who find little opportunity for earning their sup- 
port on the other side invade our industries. Christian 
voters will be placed on the horns of a dilemma : on the one 
hand, there is our duty to protect the interests of our own 



THE IMMIGEANT 75 

returned veterans in industrial fields by a refusal to permit 
the alien to land; on the other hand, there stands the 
pathetic figure of the Allied soldier who has stood shoulder 
to shoulder with our own sons of the soil in the great fight 
for righteousness and permanent peace. Shall the fruits for 
which he has sacrificed his best physical powers be denied to 
him in the hour of victory? 

If selfishness does not predominate in the adjustment of 
these and kindred questions when the postbellum immigra- 
tion commences, the equitable decisions and actions will be 
directly or indirectly attributed to the influence of the 
church. However, only in so far as her conscience has been 
awakened to a new sense of responsibility in a day of flux 
and change that spells opportunity for the Kingdom, will 
justice be done. 

The question cannot easily be disposed of by the church, 
or any other organization. It will not be sufficient to remove 
all restraint from immigration, because the least fit are most 
likely to emigrate, as they are assisted by relatives in the 
United States, though perhaps they may be incapable of 
earning even their own passage. 

Methodism's Eesponsibility 

As far as Methodism is concerned, the problem is social 
and industrial, as well as moral and spiritual. 

There can be no doubt that in spite of the fact that a 
noted writer has shown that the development of the moral 
attributes of the good soldier is made possible by war, there 
still exists the likelihood of a terrible demoralization follow- 
ing in its wake. 

MOEALS AND A DiLEMMA 

Life in the army necessitates the breaking of family ties, 
and the restrictions of camp life lead to license on the part 
of those who have not a spiritual balance when the oppor- 
tunity for dissipation presents itself. There is also bound to 
be a reaction from the strained discipline of military author- 



76 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

ity in wartime when the conscripted civilian is discharged. 
However, he probably has caught the current spirit of rest- 
lessness that disintegrates character ; and added to all this is 
a stunted mental growth that would lead to superior poise 
had war not interrupted the education of so many of the 
youth of the European countries. 

The majority of men who leave the European armies to 
seek an opportunity to begin life afresh in America may not 
be in a demoralized condition as described, but such condi- 
tions undoubtedly will exist to a sufficiently large extent to 
warrant the attention of all who are interested in the moral 
welfare of this nation. 

The justice of exclusion of morally undesirable candi- 
dates for citizenship would be a decidedly difficult matter to 
determine in the very cases that would present themselves ; 
if the laissez-faire attitude is assumed by America, the case 
has not been disposed of. If the Church recognizes the 
danger of corruption from this course and agitates absolute 
and sweeping exclusion, she has so far done nothing to 
remedy conditions. Somewhere the crisis that she refused 
to face intelligently and fairly has to be met by some other 
nation. Here again we are upon the horns of the dilemma. 
If everyone is admitted, even the demoralized classes, a new 
menace faces us on the threshold of our own homes. The 
solution of the problem is not one to be weighed and discov- 
ered by any exclusively scientific methods of the sociolo- 
gists: it is distinctly a burden of responsibility upon the 
church, and Methodism must be preparing herself during 
the period of the war, to have a final and adequate answer 
upon this subject when it is required of her. 

Women, Wak, and Wages 

An entirely new complexion will be put upon the study 
of the immigration problem by the sudden shifting of the 
ratio of male and female immigrants. The custom, born of 
necessity, was for the breadwinner to provide as well as pos- 
sible for his family and leave them in the old surroundings 



THE IMMIGRANT 77 

while he sought the new. Sometimes the man was fortunate 
enough to be able to bring his whole family with him, but 
more often, with the ^^ later'' type of immigrants, this was 
impossible. The woman received her support from America 
and eventually joined her husband when he prospered. 

To-day the manhood of Europe is under arms and want 
has compelled women to turn to occupations hitherto re- 
garded as exclusively belonging to the men. The women 
have learned to earn. In the great increase of immigra- 
tion expected in the comparatively near future, we are as- 
sured that women will predominate and thus reverse entirely 
the old order of things. 

Already, at this present time, conditions prove that 
there will be overwhelming preponderance of women in 
Europe during this generation. Many of these have lost 
their natural protectors and have the responsibility upon 
them of providing for their children. EVen allowing for the 
probability of pensions, need in the home will exist; for 
wages before the war were too small, and pensions seldom 
exceed, or even reach the wage scale. 

Some of the women have taken the men's places in the 
mills and other industries, and have proved themselves as 
competent as their predecessors. Having had this training 
will fit them for employment in America, and this country 
must be the ultimate goal of most of them whether they suc- 
ceed in their attempt to reach it or not. Possessing a certain 
degree of skill, and arriving at a time when labor conditions 
are hopelessly upset, their chance for landing may be favor- 
able. 

What result such an invasion of female labor will have 
upon social and industrial conditions of the present type re- 
mains to be seen. Far less important are these social as- 
pects of the question. The great issue will be upon moral 
and spiritual grounds. Homes have been ruthlessly de- 
stroyed by the enemy; whole communities have been dis- 
persed and occupations have gone. Relatives of the people 
from countries such as Belgium will send money to assist 



78 CHEISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOE AMEEICA 

their friends, and the invasion is certain. It is reasonable 
to assume that many will gain an entrance. 

The Eemedy Lies With the Church 

The herding of foreign laborers in bunk-houses has al- 
ways been a menace to their health and morals ; but if the 
women immigrants are to outnumber the men, such condi- 
tions will be absolutely impossible. Doubtless the first steps 
to remedy the evil will not be taken by the contractors em- 
ploying the foreigners. Legislation will be active, but always 
insufficient. The church will either discover a means of spir- 
itual protection for our foreign visitors or gross injustice to 
them will result in spite of all legal protection. Once having 
gained a footing on these shores, such women will doubtless 
remain and be the mothers of coming citizens of America. 

Where the church extends her care to the immigrant 
women, from purely religious ministrations to practical 
assistance that will prevent or combat all exploitation, a con- 
tact has been established that will give a more direct access 
to the spiritual life of these people. Methodism is planning 
to adopt the most strategic methods of approach and is thus 
building the kingdom of Christ and, incidentally, perform- 
ing the most patriotic of all services for our nation in has- 
tening the assimilation of the new life that impacts on ours. 

Maeriage 

The question of marriage may be an expulsive factor 
in the emigration of women, for opportunities to establish 
home life in Europe will be small. Their problem will be our 
problem when they reach the United States. If, because of 
the scarcity of men in Europe, the girls that emigrate to 
America marry other foreign-born citizens, or the children 
of foreign-born, or even truly native sons, the barriers that 
prevent thorough Americanization will tend to weaken. 
Where rapid Americanization proceeds on these lines, un- 
usual opportunity is given to the church at the period of 
transition, to win the new people to Christ. 



THE IMMIGEANT 79 

MoEAL Dangers 

Women arriving in the postbellum immigration days 
will be at a peculiar disadvantage in arriving alone in a new 
country without a protector, and illiterate in the use of Eng- 
lish. It has been predicted that most of them will be young 
girls ranging in age generally from sixteen to twenty-one. 
Accustomed to peasant life as most of them are, the loneli- 
ness of the great cities will be unendurable. 

None but the immigrant can realize the depth of agony 
that loneliness brings, and no more welcome service can be 
given to incoming strangers than some evidence of sincere 
interest and friendliness. The forces of evil operate in no 
crude fashion, and those who seek the downfall of the unso- 
phisticated girls that reach Ellis Island yearning for sym- 
pathy and attention are very adept at appearing to perform 
those little kindly ministrations that are the duty of Chris- 
tian people who have caught John Wesley's vision, and hold 
that the ^^ world is our parish.'' Not many of the millions of 
Methodist young people can personally and directly min- 
ister to their lonely sisters, but the Home Board is our 
representative, and through the officials of Methodism we 
may meet this responsibility. 

It is remarkable the number of young girls who reach 
New York without a relative to meet them. Some have ad- 
dresses to seek, but inquiries show that their friends have 
moved and left no information ; others merely trust to mem- 
ory to carry the addresses, and fail to recall the number or 
street, or cannot easily make themselves understood. To 
turn such unprotected, foreign-speaking girls loose in a 
great city, would be nothing less than criminal. Immigra- 
tion authorities have not the time to investigate these cases 
and deportation and blasted hopes may be imminent. 

A Widening Work of Mercy 

Our representative who is on duty day and night at the 
port of entry may learn of such a case, and so Methodism 



80 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

mothers the charge until she is safe from all moral danger. 
It is in extremity that hearts are melted, and gratitude is 
not an unknown grace in the lives of the European peasan- 
try. In other years when the immigrant girl has become 
Americanized, the deaconess garb is a symbol to her of all 
that is kind and Christly. The lesson of love has not easily 
been forgotten, and Methodism perhaps in the guise of an- 
other phase of home missionary endeavor gathers the chil- 
dren of the one-time stranger into the Sunday school and 
the Deaconess again demonstrates practical Christianity — 
and thus the fruit is garnered. 

Prejudice Against the Foreigner is a Mark of 

Ignorance 

Indiscriminate prejudice against foreigners is only 
gradually dying out, but one of the moral effects of the war 
may be the closer unity and better understanding between 
nations. The immigrants that come to us are generally 
above the average of their class, and we have better material 
to assimilate than we may have realized. A literacy test 
would insure ability to grasp the fundamental conceptions 
upon which our democracy is based, and ability to read will 
prove an avenue for propaganda on behalf of the cross. 

Some Startling Facts 

Whether we are narrow enough to wince at the truth of 
these following statistics or not, the facts remain. The 
people of foreign birth constitute one seventh of our whole 
country's population! The cause of the immigrant ought, 
then, to have a champion in Methodism if the same ratio of 
foreign birth exist in her membership, and probably such is 
the case. 

Hvery fourth man of our arm-bearing strength of the 
nation is foreign born, and there is no better evidence needed 
of the true Americanization of our immigrant than the ready 
response on the part of the able-bodied sons of other coun- 
tries to the call of their foster mother — America— in these 



THE IMMIGRANT 81 

days when the ^* Trial by Fire'' is proving to be the *^ melting 
pof of the nations on our own soil. 

Amekica at the Mercy of Aliens 

The success of the United States of America with her 
allies, in winning the war, depends to a very large degree on 
the immigrants who have already taken up their abode with 
us. To face the matter frankly : we are entirely at the mercy 
of the foreign-born in America ! But we have no room for 
alarm. Our guests have become more than alien visitors. 
They are of our own household, and patriotism is as fervent 
with them as it is with us. The great industries that make 
possible the speediest victory and termination of the war 
are manned largely, if not almost entirely, by men from 
other countries. 

Seven out of every ten who work in iron are immi- 
grants. 

Seven out of ten miners of bituminous coal are immi- 
grants. 

Three out of four living in the packing towns are from 
abroad, or children of those who have been born abroad. 

Four out of every five engaged in the silk industry are 
foreigners. 

Seven out of eight employed in woolen mills are immi- 
grants. Nine out of ten engaged in refining petroleum are 
also immigrants. 

Nineteen out of twenty who produce our sugar supplies 
are also immigrants. 

And seven out of eight who keep our railroads safe were 
born over our borders. 

In every instance these 'industries mentioned are of the 
most vital importance in the prosecution of the war. How 
far the ofttimes despised immigrant has measured up to 
his task in increasing and improving output is a matter of 
common knowledge. His support of the Red Cross, his war 
savings, and his Liberty Loan subscriptions compare with 



82 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

the record of any other proud patriot of the oldest stock in 
America. 

Germans and Citizenship 

In considering the number of foreign-born people of 
our nation and their attitude toward the war we naturally 
lead to the point concerning the proportion of Germans that 
have mingled in the hosts that make America their home. 

Germans and Methodism 

Plain justice demands recognition on the part of Meth- 
odism of her German constituency, to which we point with 
pride, notwithstanding the fact that their relatives in the 
Fatherland may be our bitterest enemies. We have 63,610 
members of the German-speaking Methodist Church so- 
cieties who, as an integral part of Methodism, have not been 
less active than we have been in demonstrating their prac- 
tical patriotism and support of our President. We have no 
vain regrets that we opened our arms and hearts to our Teu- 
tonic brethren, for we have illustrated the influence and 
power of the church in Americanizing the alien. 

Draining the Kaiser's Man Power 

Statistics concerning German immigration may be illu- 
minating if viewed from the standpoint of the church. Be- 
tween 1776 and 1890, in every three aliens arriving in Amer- 
ica, one German might be found. Thus for a little over one 
hundred years the man power of Germany was drained of 
the very best, progressive, thrifty element at the rate we 
have mentioned. German immigrants have generally large 
families, and so the sons that might have been trained for 
the precipitation of war were diverted to useful lives and 
contributed to the material prosperity of our country. Not 
only this, but churches were built up and sustained in many 
localities as home missionary enterprises due to the spirit- 
ual zeal of German Methodists, 



THE IMMIGRANT 83 

The Loyalty of '^The People Called Methodists'' 

Suddenly, for apparently unaccountable reasons, the 
ratio of one to three is changed, and only one out of every 
seventeen immigrant arrivals since 1890 have been Germans, 
Whatever the cause of this is, it is beside the question. The 
significant fact to us is, that after allowing for deaths, and 
those who return to the Fatherland, there are now less than 
one million former subjects of the Kaiser who have not been 
here for over a quarter of a century. The implication is 
that the ties to the old country have been weakened, or more 
likely entirely severed under the many years of association 
with American institutions. In this class of truly American 
Germans whose sympathies are against autocracy are found 
the German Methodists. How far our church has contrib- 
uted to the process that changed the sympathies of these 
members is a difficult point to determine. We are satisfied, 
however, that ours was not an insignificant contribution to 
the development of American loyalty. 

We do not hold a brief for the German Anti- American 
living here. God forbid ! But we do wish to indicate clearly 
that only one out of every eight of truly German blood in 
America are not born here, or have been of long residence. 
This clearly shows that the possibilities are seven to one in 
favor of the probable loyalty on the part of all German- 
speaking Methodists. 

It is interesting to note the wide distribution of Ger- 
man Methodist Episcopal Conferences over the nation. In 
addition to less extensive work in the California Conference 
and several others, there are the Central German, Chicago 
German, East German, Northern German, Pacific German, 
Saint Louis German, Southern German, and West German 
Annual Conferences. 

Ireland's Contribution 

Since the foundation of our government, Ireland has 
contributed over four million souls to America. Taken in 



84 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

the mass, this branch of the Celtic people have not been 
greatly touched by our denomination because, unlike the 
'^ newer'' immigrants, they hold fast to Roman Catholicism. 
The Protestant contribution of Ireland while much smaller 
than the Roman Catholic, compares with all nations in point 
of quality. Some of the greatest preachers in Methodism 
have been Irishmen and immigrants of humble origin. 
The rest of Great Britain has given a shade less than Ireland 
did, their share being a little under four million. Scandina- 
via has given about half of this latter number. 

A popular misconception concerning the Irish-Amer- 
ican is that he invariably gravitates to the saloon business 
as a matter of course. We regret to admit that there are 
grounds for such a belief; but in fairness to him we must 
point out that fifty per cent more Irishmen in America are 
acting as guardians of the law — either as policemen or in 
other capacities — than are engaged in the liquor traffic. 
Still more noteworthy is the fact that there are three times 
as many Irish- American teachers, as there are Irish- Amer- 
ican policemen. 

Other Peoples 

Among other nationalities that are ministered to by the 
funds of the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 
are the Armenians, Bohemians, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, 
Welsh, Greeks, Japanese, Koreans, Norwegians, Portu- 
guese, Slavs, Mexican and other Spanish, Swedish, Syrians, 
and Welsh, all of this work being carried on by missionaries 
speaking in the mother tongue of these people. 

Some Problems 

Passing again from the consideration of the ^^ earlier" 
type of immigration to the ^' later" there is still another 
new factor that will have to be given its proper relation to 
our plans for the evangelization of the ^4ater" types. 

Very few of the old-time immigrants return to their 
native land to forsake permanently the country that gave 



THE IMMIGRANT 85 

them economic independence. To-day thirty-eight per cent 
of all who come through Ellis Island return after they have 
become financially successful. This is more than twice the 
number of the ** older '^ immigrants who return. Where the 
object of hard work in America is to gain enough money 
to support the returning immigrant in idleness in Europe, 
the possibility of developing citizenship is remote, and 
points of contact are far removed. The work of the church 
is almost futile in dealing with such foreigners, and the only 
blessing that can be looked for is an occasional conversion 
that would be the means of carrying back the message of sal- 
vation to a very limited few members of the benighted and 
oppressed classes of Europe. What effect the war will have 
upon this tendency cannot be foretold at this time. 

Another point that has an important bearing on the 
work of Methodism is the conditions that compel even those 
who previously throughout a lifetime have been exclusively 
engaged in farm labor to turn to work in factories, mines, 
quarries, and construction gangs. This means overcrowd- 
ing in cities as the accompanying charts illustrate. Where 
proper distribution fails assimilation is made more difficult 
and, incidentally, home missionary work encounters greater 
prejudice or opposition. 

The Foreign- Speaking Chuech 

Such conditions must be met, for they are among the 
common problems that constitute the difficulties of the home 
mission work dealing with the foreign population. The 
foreign-speaking church presents a possible solution. By 
far the largest effort to help the people of the ^^ earlier'' 
immigration, such as Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, and 
Danes, was confined to work of this nature. Ministers were 
developed from among their own people, and even Confer- 
ences were organized as the work expanded in later years. 
There is a difference of opinion as to how much this plan 
of the foreign-speaking church aided the growth of Method- 
ism and accomplished the original object. 



86 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

However adaptable the foreign-speaking churcli plan 
may liave been in the past under conditions applying to the 
old order of immigration, there seems no other method quite 
as good as the variations of this in dealing with the ^4ater" 
immigration. Better plans may be evolved later, but at 
present Methodism is meeting her opportunity and minister- 
ing in this manner to many nationalities. 

Italy 

By far the most important work of this class is in con- 
nection with Italian immigration. To show the extent of 
this work to date, the following Conferences might be men- 
tioned as having Italian foreign-speaking Methodist Epis- 
copal Work: Baltimore, Central New York, Central Penn- 
sylvania, Colorado, Des Moines, Detroit, Erie, Gulf, Indi- 
ana, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Newark, New England, New 
England Southern, New York, New York East, North-East 
Ohio, Northern Minnesota, Northern New York, Ohio, 
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Rock River, Troy, Wilmington, 
Wyoming. 

Advantages of the Policy 

The advantages of the policy are apparent : The adult 
foreigners can only be reached in their own language. 
There is no other mode of expression in which people can 
give vent to religious experience even when they understand 
English than in their mother tongue. And, finally, it is 
easier to discover leaders among their own people and use 
them as the most direct means of gaining access to the heart 
of the foreigner. 

The Need of Change 

Having viewed the advantages of the policy, the difficul- 
ties, while not so obvious on first sight, must not be over- 
looked. Foreign-speaking work fails to hold the young 
people who have learned English in public schools, and the 
hope of assimilation lies with this second generation. The 



THE IMMIGRANT 87 

results considered as an investment for home missionary 
funds may prove disappointing. The growth of the foreign- 
speaking church is necessarily slow, and not sufficient in 
some instances to warrant such a large appropriation as 
would be required to maintain it. The Board of Home Mis- 
sions demands the utmost possible returns from the expend- 
iture of all money intrusted to its administration. 

The same arguments that hold good in the controversy 
concerning German language newspapers are applicable to 
the conditions developed in foreign-speaking churches. The 
first charge is that the process of Americanization is hin- 
dered by the continuation of foreign customs that differen- 
tiate the group from other Americans. The answer has been 
advanced that these very things that are looked upon as a 
detriment to the development of good citizenship and com- 
mon national interests may be an asset in the hands of truly 
loyal leaders in fostering Americanism. 

At all events, the present scheme of work is inadequate 
to meet the situation. The church is functioning with suc- 
cess along these lines, but the leaders of the work among 
immigrants should be the first to admit that new policies 
will have to be devised to meet the changing and imperative 
needs of this phase of home missions. Such a state of af- 
fairs casts no reflection on the zeal of Methodism. The un- 
settled conditions and the new and very different problems 
of the ^4ater" immigration are the opportunity and the chal- 
lenge of our denomination. 

If we fail to grasp the opportunity that seems so provi- 
dentially presented to adjust ourselves to the call of the 
world for service, then shall ^^Ichabod'' be written upon 
the doors of our temples of worship. 

^*Let Them Alone, and They'll Go Hiome'' 

The laissez-faire policy is obsolete. Never again may 
Methodism, waning in some locality because of foreign in- 
vasion, remove to other fields. The blood of these people 
shall be upon her skirts. Not upon the local organization 



88 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

alone rests the responsibility, for often lack of support on 
the part of the whole denomination is the real cause of 
failure to meet the situation and to welcome the foreigner 
and adapt her resources to minister to him. 

Othek Sources of Immigration 

There are two other main channels of entrance to this 
country in addition to the Eastern ports and the Canadian 
line, that bring two distinctly different types of newcomers. 
On the Pacific Coast there is a comparatively small stream 
of Oriental peoples, and from the Southern border line flows 
a larger stream composed of Mexicans, some fair and cul- 
tured exiles among the masses of swarthy and ignorant 
peons. 

Oriental Exclusiveness 

Home Missionary work among the Orientals is limited 
in area, as the Chinese in particular do not scatter far from 
the point of landing. Chinese conservatism, which is pro- 
verbial, accounts for the ^^Chinatowns'' in large cosmopoli- 
tan Western cities. Most of these Orientals are visitors, 
hoping to return to China to rest eternally in the tombs of 
their fathers. They ask no concessions of the white man. 
They are industrious. They are law-abiding as a people. 
They wish to be left to their own devices largely, and they 
never thrust themselves into the affairs of the other nation- 
alities surrounding them. Lately when a fire broke out in 
a little ^^ Chinatown" of a California city, some kindly in- 
clined American sent down a perfectly new suit of clothes to 
be given to one of the dwellers of Chinatown who had lost 
his all. Forty different Chinamen were offered the gar- 
ments and refused to accept them, and two would entertain 
the idea of possession only if they were allowed to pay for 
the suit. In this they resemble the Japanese, who permit no 
help by well-meaning American relief societies. 

Whether it is Oriental independence or not that lies at 
the root of the matter, the fact is that there is a subtle 



THE IMMIGEANT 89 

barrier between the white and yellow races on American soil. 
One result of this exclusiveness is that in Los Angeles or 
San Francisco the Chinese druggist retails — even as he did 
at home — dried lizards and toads as a panacea for human 
ills. Where devils, Joss houses, ^^hop,'^ and fan-tan flour- 
ish there is a corresponding wall of opposition to the mes- 
sage of the gospel. 

The Winning Weapon of Love 

Battering this wall with the weapons of love, Method- 
ism is wedged and entrenching in the very hearts of the 
*' little Chinas" with schools and missions. Much of our 
work is done with the children, and an authority has said, 
** There is only one infallible way to win the lasting good will 
of a Chinaman in America, and that is to pay tribute to his 
child.'' 

Mexico and China 

There is a close relation between the Chinese and Mex- 
ican immigration problems. There was for a while an ex- 
odus of Mexican labor from California that was viewed with 
alarm by many. Some authorities estimated that one fourth 
of the Mexican laborers, mostly without families in the 
United States, returned across the border. Some have 
boldly stated that German intrigue and propaganda are re- 
sponsible. It looked for a while as if Chinese labor would 
have to be called upon to carry on much of the work that 
Mexicans formerly did. However, the tide has turned again. 
The literacy test has been suspended by federal authorities 
and whole train-loads of Mexicans are being brought in as 
laborers. In one case at least they were kept at their jobs 
with shotguns. At present there are more Mexicans in Cali- 
fornia than all Orientals in the nation. The Hindus are in- 
creasing slowly, but the Chinese and Japanese are a static 
problem. 

Thus whether European, Mexican, Oriental, or any 
other type of immigration, it all bristles with problems for 



90 CHRISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOE AMEEICA 

our nation as never before. There is not space at our com- 
mand to more than touch upon the most apparent of these 
difficulties. We have endeavored to show that the conditions 
are new, and that the church must still pioneer in this field 
of service that will aid our nation in these perilous times. 

We Will Do Oub Paet 

Shall Methodism aid in this work of patriotism? The 
motives of loyalty compel our participation. But is there 
not a higher call than the call of our country, and a still 
purer motive that thrills our souls? Even as we minister 
unto one of the least of these do we minister unto our 
Christ? Nehemiah said to the people of God: ^^Ye see the 
distress that we are in!'' They said, *'Let us rise up and 
build, ' ' so they strengthened their hands for the good work. 
In this, the greatest of all days of opportunity, we answer 
with God's people of old, for this indeed is ^'a work that is 
great and large. ' ' 

Questions for Discussion 

1. Distinguish between the ^^ earlier" type of immigra- 
tion and the later. Contrast these and state which presents 
the more complex home missionary problem and why. 

2. What are the outstanding difficulties of religious 
work with immigrants ? 

3. Eeview the present situation and state your own 
opinions concerning the ultimate effect of the war on immi- 
gration. 

4. What is meant by ^ * expulsive ' ' factors and ^ ' attrac- 
tive ' ' factors ? Mention some of each. 

5. What is your opinion concerning the probability of 
women immigrants outnumbering men immigrants, and how 
will such conditions affect home missionary enterprises? 

6. Has the alien generally become Americanized? 

7. What are the most interesting facts relating to Ger- 
man immigration that you have found in this study? 



THE IMMIGRANT 91 

8. Describe the advantages of the foreign-speaking 
church. 

9. What are the disadvantages, and which outweighs 
the other? 

10. What are the chief sources of immigration? State 
as many nationalities as possible that are being ministered 
to by Methodism in their mother tongue. 

11. Discuss the problem of imported laborers in Cali- 
fornia. 

12. What is Methodism's obligation to the immigrant? 



7 



IV 
THE CITY 



CHAPTER IV 
THE CITY 

The Modeen City 

The United States is rapidly becoming a nation of cities. 
Already 46.3 per cent of the population are in city commu- 
nities, while in fifteen States more than half the people live 
in cities. The trend is constantly accelerating, as is seen 
from the fact that in 1880, 29.5 per cent; in 1890, 36.1 per 
cent ; in 1900, 40.5 per cent of the people lived in urban com- 
munities. Unless some unforeseen tendency manifests 
itself, it is quite likely that the census of 1920 will list half 
of the population of the United States in the city column. 
Since 1900 the increase in urban population for the entire 
country has been at the rate of 34.9, and the increase in rural 
population at the rate of 11.1 per cent. 

In 1818 there was not one city in the United States that 
would now be ranked as second class, but to-day there are 
226 cities of over 25,000 population, 153 cities of from 
25,000 to 100,000, and 73 of over 100,000. Many causes con- 
tribute to the new conditions. Normal birth rate is higher in 
the city. There is a constant migrating of rural-born peo- 
ple to the city ; and the foreign-born from overseas, although 
rural in their homeland, have herded together in the densely 
populated sections of the cities. 

Two Types of Cities. Generally speaking, there are 
two types of cities to-day. New York, Boston, Chicago, and 
San Francisco represent the first type of those cities which 
are older, and have for the most part become settled in their 
traditions and ways of doing things. These cities are very 
difficult to influence in any fundamental manner. They have 
become institutions of tremendous power. Their very size 
has caused a provincialism to develop which fails tq r^cog-. 

93 



94 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

nize those traits of other cities that are worth while adopt- 
ing, while the tremendous rush of life and the insistent prob- 
lems which constantly multiply give little opportunity for 
the redirection of mislaid plans or errors of judgment in 
earlier days. 

A city of the older and unnatural type of development 
is San Francisco. Born in a fortnight during the gold days, 
its foundations were thrown together hastily and less wisely. 
The first comers were transient and ablaze with the lust for 
gold. They came for a night. They expected to go back the 
next day with what nuggets and gold dust they did not hand 
over to the gambler, highwayman, and profiteers. Nobody 
realized how rare the location was with its remarkable facil- 
ities for land and water transportation, and the possibilities 
for grouping together there a wide range of industries. No 
one foresaw the city of seventy years later with its popula- 
tion of half a million. Frisco 's streets were mostly narrow 
and its life crowded, especially down in the trading and vice 
quarters. For a new and Western city in gentle clime it has 
all too largely lost its opportunity for civic beauty and social 
good order. The earthquake furnished a tragic opportunity 
for some rearrangement of its central avenues. Still its 
people of taste for culture and the open air are residing 
^^ across the bay" in Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley. 

The second type of city is that which either has had its 
origin in recent years, or else has developed in a more 
normal way. Minneapolis is one of the normal and modem 
types of cities. Only ten miles and across the Mississippi 
River from the old French Catholic capital, Saint Paul, it is 
as different from its ^Hwin city'' as is Los Angeles from San 
Francisco, or Washington from New Orleans. 

The first actual pioneer cabin of Minneapolis was 
erected in 1849. In 1856 the first flouring mill was built, and 
in a very short time the place became an industrial center for 
flour milling, lumbering, and agricultural industries. 
Crowding lumber jacks, files of Indians, and the rude fron- 
tiersmen did not blind the founders to the wisdom of laying 



THE CITY 95 

out ample parks and wide streets with due heed to the loca- 
tion of the great mills and factories, its future growth as a 
city, the surrounding lake region and its arteries of travel. 

In schools, churches and civic life Minneapolis early- 
proceeded to establish a wholesome reputation. The great 
State University was located there which now has about 
13,000 students. It has the record of the lowest mortality 
rate of any metropolis in the nation. This is sufficient com- 
ment upon the wisdom of its judicious civic life, its devotion 
to clean business, and steady, safe growth and its enjoy- 
ment of not only ample, well laid out and shady avenues but 
of insisting upon having all other natural charms possible 
in the north. 

Minneapolis, like many other similar towns, was able to 
start with the experience of the older and larger cities, and 
both in their municipal planning and provision for the gen- 
eral welfare of the people its citizens have been able to get 
results more suited to the needs of the population. 

Rapid Growth. In both types of city, the general char- 
acteristic has been the same, namely, rapid growth. This 
is seen in the percentage of increase of the population of 
the following cities since 1870: Saint Louis, 220 per cent; 
Boston, 230 per cent; New York, 270 per cent; Philadelphia, 
275 per cent; Pittsburgh, 310 per cent; Erie, 460 per cent; 
Toledo, 660 per cent ; Cleveland, 725 per cent ; Chicago, 830 
per cent ; Detroit, 930 per cent ; Akron, 1,400 per cent ; Los 
Angeles, 10,200 per cent. 

The rate of growth of some of the newer cities is seen in 
the following * * graph ' ' : 



96 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 



RAPID GROWTH OF CITIES 



Population 
l,000'sl&60 1870 I8&0 I&90 1900 1910 1917 




DETROIT, MICH 



L05ANGELES.CAL. 



SEATTLE.WASH. 



TOLEDO.O. 



/f AKRON.O. 
>rERIE,PA. 

OKLAHOMA CITY, 
OKLA. 



The result in tlie older cities has been to force the pop- 
ulation out into the surrounding suburbs as section after 
section has been given over to business. Business itself has 
pushed farther and farther up town until in many instances 
that part of the city which saw the first change from resi- 



THE CITY 97 

dence to business now has seen business push still further up 
town and the section again become a place for homes. The 
original dwellers in this section lived in private houses. In 
those days the population of the community was not what we 
would now call large. Men were able to walk from their 
homes to their places of business, a healthy community spirit 
prevailed, and the interest of the entire city was the interest 
of each individual. To-day, however, after the years during 
which the dwelling houses were made over into business 
houses and then abandoned for that purpose, one finds a 
different type of inhabitants in that neighborhood. The old 
stock was what we are accustomed to call American. The 
new stock is very largely non-English-speaking and not ac- 
customed to American standards and ideals. In the city of 
Detroit there are fifty nationalities in the public schools 
totaling 164,532 pupils. 

The development of Akron, Ohio, has brought largely 
the same class of people as before, except that during 1917- 
18 there was an increase in percentage of foreign-bom popu- 
lation, owing to the large number of Americans who went 
from Akron into the army. One of the greatest forces in the 
later development of Akron has been the automobile in- 
dustry. The General Electric Company has been largely 
responsible for the 75 or 80 per cent increase in Erie^s 
population since 1910. This also has brought a much 
larger percentage of Slav and Italian population to the 
city. 

Detroit is another city which owes its marvelous later 
growth and development to a special industry, in this case 
also the automobile. While it is true that in the case of De- 
troit the growth has been so very rapid during the past few 
years that possibly it has been beyond the power of the ordi- 
nary forces that would influence a city in the guidance of its 
ethical and religious ideals, nevertheless it is true that these 
growths, in a great number of our American cities, have 
come at a time in their life and experience and at a day in the 
general science of cities wheii they w^re better flttecj to deal 



98 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

with some of the more difficult problems that have to be met 
in every urban community. 

The Common City Problems 

The American city is marked by bigness. In every 
phase of its life things are done on a tremendous scale. This 
very bigness itself brings to practically every city problems 
that are common to all. 

Complex Social Life. The social life of the city is ex- 
ceedingly complex. Whether it be among the lowly toilers 
of the sweat shops, the mechanics or day laborers, the thou- 
sands of office and business workers, or those who live on the 
income of invested money, the social conditions both in the 
matter of contact with one's fellows and in the ordinary 
social activities of life are of such character that life has 
become an incessant rush. In the place of the ordinary 
forms of home entertainment and similar diversions, peo- 
ple now have recourse to some form of paid amusement. 
Night is turned into day and the outside-of-work hours be- 
come very wearing on the population. 

Lack of NeighhorJiood Spirit. No longer is found the 
old-time neighborhood and community spirit. A sort of 
individualism characterizes most of the life. One may live 
in an apartment for months and never know who the people 
are above or below, to the right or to the left. Someone 
has said concerning New York city: *^The original cliff- 
dwellers of America fought, bled and died together, but the 
modern cliff-dwellers of Manhattan have no dealings with 
their neighbors in the niche above or below, save an occa- 
sional dispute over the milk through the medium of the 
dumb-waiter. Back in the country everyone knows every- 
body; but Citizen Jones of New York can walk from the 
Battery to Central Park at noonday and pass twenty thou- 
sand people without meeting an acquaintance." 

Modified Home Life. Not only has the neighborhood 
spirit vanished, but also to some extent the home. The 
building of great tenement and apartment houses has lim- 



THE CITY 



99 



ited the amount of space which people could afford to rent 
from two to five small rooms. Here the normal-sized family 
has difficulty in finding space for either much privacy or the 
spending of the evening hours in any common gathering. 
Bachelor apartments and apartments for bachelor-girls are 




100 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

on the increase. More and more is there a tendency to 
board. The home has become a place where people go 
when they are ready to sleep. Electric lights and steam 
radiators, even where there is room, are seldom conducive to 
the sort of home atmosphere characterized by the large 
reading lamp on the centertable and the blazing logs 
on the andiron. As for children, in some cities they are 
quite apt to grow up to be like parts of a machine. The 
opportunity for comparative isolation in order that the 
great human qualities may come to their best is not always 
available. 

For those who must live with from seven to eleven in 
two rooms, and even six in one, where poor ventilation and 
lighting as well as inadequate furnishings characterize the 
place, ^^home" does not have its old-time meaning. And of 
these latter there are literally hundreds of thousands in the 
cities of the United States. 

Congested Population. Congestion of population is a 
constantly increasing menace to the best life of any com- 
munity. In New York city, below Fourteenth Street, there 
are three sections where the population averages 800 to the 
acre and four sections where it averages 600 to 800 to the 
acre. In the same city there is a block whose density of 
population is 1,260 to the acre, thus giving less than six 
square feet of ground space to a person. Again the children 
are affected because they must play in the streets over- 
crowded and choked with city traffic, and the toll of their 
lives each year is exceedingly heavy. Not only is bodily in- 
jury apparent in these sections, but also crime and vice are 
bred and an evil economic burden is seen in steadily increas- 
ing rents and lower wages. 

Polyglot Character of Cities. A great deal of the con- 
gestion is in sections occupied by foreign populations. The 
polyglot character of the population of the cities of the 
United States is seen in the following figures for twenty- 
cities, which have the largest foreign population, including 
native whites of foreign or mixed parentage : 



THE CITY 101 

I'all Kiver, Massaehusetts 86 . 7 per cent 

New York City, New York. 80.7 per cent 

Lowell, Massachusetts 80.5 per cent 

Chicago, Illinois 79 . 6 per cent 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 78 . 9 per cent 

Paterson, New Jersey 77.4 per cent 

Boston, Massachusetts ,. . 76.5 per cent 

Cleveland, Ohio 76 . 4 per cent 

Cambridge, Massachusetts 75.6 per cent 

Detroit, Michigan 75 . 3 per cent 

Bridgeport, Connecticut 73.4 per cent 

Providence, Rhode Island. ., 73.3 per cent 

Newark, New Jersey 72 . 7 per cent 

San Francisco, California 72.3^ per cent 

Jersey City, New Jersey 72 per cent 

Buffalo, New York 71 . 8 per cent 

New Haven, Connecticut < 71 . 8 per cent 

Worcester, Massachusetts. 71.6 per cent 

Saint Paul, Minnesota 71.3 per cent 

Scranton, Pennsylvania 70.2 per cent 

An excellent illustration of the polyglot character of the 
modern city and the racial manner of its distribution is seen 
in the following study of the population of the city of Chi- 
cago. According to the school census of May 4, 1914, the 
population of the city of Chicago was 2,437,526. The dif- 
ferent nationalities of this population are represented ac- 
cording to the following figures : 

American-born, white 752,111 or 30.1 per cent 

German* . ., 399,977 or 16 . 1 per cent 

Polish* 231,346 or 9.2 per cent 

Russian* 166,134 or 6.6 per cent 

Irish 146,660 or 5.9 per cent 

Swedish 118,533 or 4.8 per cent 

Italian 108,160 or 4.3 per cent 

Bohemian , 102,749 or 4.1 per cent 

Austrian* 58,483 or 2.3 per cent 

* The larger number of Jews of the city belong to the nationalities 
starred. 

A foreigner is one born outside of the United States or whose 
parents or father were foreign born. 



102 CHEISTIAN DEMOCEACY FOE AMEEICA 

Negro 54,557 or 2.2 per cent 

Norwegian 47,496 or 1.9 per cent 

English , 45,714 or 1.8 per cent 

Canadian 44,744 or 1.8 per cent 

Hungarian , 31,863 or 1.3 per cent 

Lithuanian 24,650 or 1.0 per cent 

Danish 22,394 or 1.0 per cent 

Scotch 17,662 or 0.9 per cent 

Hollander 16,914 or 0.7 per cent 



96. per cent 

The eighteen nationalities mentioned above represent 
96 per cent of the total population of the city. The remain- 
ing four per cent of the population is distributed among 
about twenty nationalities. It should be borne in mind that 
the figures representing the American white, the German, 
the Polish, and especially the Eussian population, include 
a great many Jews. 

The following statements regarding the distribution of 
nationalities by wards show clearly the tendency to congre- 
gate into colonies. 

In the 16th ward 61 per cent of the population is Pol- 
ish, while 52 per cent of the population of the 17th ward is 
Polish. Of the total Polish population of the city, 33 per 
cent live in these two wards ; 46 per cent of the population 
of the 20th ward are Eussians, while 42 per cent of all the 
Eussians in the city live in the 10th, 15th, and 20th wards. 
About 25 per cent of the population of the 27th and 28th 
wards are Scandinavian. Approximately 60 per cent of all 
the Italians in the city live in the 17th, 19th, and 22d wards. 
Practically one half of the population of the 19th ward is 
Italian. Seventy per cent of the Bohemians live in the 10th, 
12th, and 34th wards. In the 12th ward 45 per cent of the 
population is Bohemian, and 49 per cent of the 24th ward is 
German. 

In 1914, 46 per cent of the Negroes of the city lived in 
the 2d ward, and at that time 40 per cent of the population 
of that ward was colored. With the enormous influx of 



THE CITY 103 

Negroes within tlie last two or three years the percentage is 
now very much larger, one school ward last May being 80 
per cent Negro. 

The Negro Emigration. This swarming into Northern 
cities of thousands of Southern Negroes has added to the 
city problem. The way folks are housed lifts up or drags 
down any community. When landlords rent disreputable, 
unsanitary, vile shacks for a high price, to so many Negroes 
that they herd together until the sides nearly bulge out, the 
sociologist has a fact to work on. When a dozen men and 
women eat and sleep together in a single room without 
proper light, ventilation, or sanitation, the moralist has a 
fact to which to pin his thinking. And when these men by 
the thousands are squandering their wages on liquor and 
lewd women, and when the young girls are being met at rail- 
road stations and taken away by city-bred Negroes who 
^^know the town,'' there is surely sufficient scientific data 
for the Church of Jesus Christ to rouse itself and do some- 
thing of a constructive character at once. 

In Detroit a one-story-and-a-half shack with four rooms 
on the first floor and one room or attic above was *' re- 
modeled" camp-meeting style into a four and a five-room 
apartment on the first floor, the front apartment renting for 
$35 a month, and two apartments upstairs. A few doors 
away a family pays $16 a month for a single unfurnished 
room without even running water. And every one of these 
rooms is so crowded with Negroes that one almost has to 
go out into the back yard to turn around. 

Southern Negroes have been coming into our Northern 
cities in such numbers as to force a rearrangement of life 
in many of them. Chicago has 75,000; Pittsburgh has 
10,000; Saint Louis, Missouri, 1,000; East Saint Louis, Il- 
linois, 6,000; Detroit, 25,000; Philadelphia and vicinity, 
40,000 ; and other cities proportionately. It is a permanent 
change of residence for 90 per cent of these folks, 75 per cent 
of whom are males and 65 per cent of whom are under fifty 
years of age. 



104 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

On the ^'Move." Increasing populations bring prob- 
lems of transportation. Most of our cities have reasonably 
good transportation to the surrounding country and may 
find their way into the suburbs, but those whose wage is 
small must stav within the citv limits and usually in the 
crowded sections. Usually these folks are they who most 
need the blessings of the country. They move from place 
to place and are t3rpical of the migratory character of thou- 
sands of city dwellers. 

The fact that boarding houses are continually changing 
their personnel from month to month, and that each year 
sees almost an entirely different group of people from the 
year before is a proof of the constant shifting of people from 
one part of the city to another. The young unmarried men 
or women away from home, and the young couples who 
board, having no ties to bind them to any locality, seem to 
prefer frequent changes of residence. Credit stores always 
have their list of agents whose whole business it is to follow 
up the long lists of customers who ''have moved." Some 
families make a business of moving every year and even 
as often as three times a year. Real estate agencies are 
realizing this tendency in the city and in most parts now 
tenants must take a year's lease. The universal school sys- 
tems make transfers so easy that the school life of the chil- 
dren is no barrier. These common and outstanding elements 
of city life enter to a large degree the problems which con- 
front the Church of Jesus Christ. 

Social scientists speak of a circulatory system in the 
city, and merchants who distribute commodities from the 
ends of the earth to the last city dweller know something 
about this system. Real-estate boards shrewdly study the 
trends of this increasing, perplexing human movement be- 
cause it determines values and is a guide in purchases and 
sales. The politicians reveal the sagacity of statesmen in 
this matter. They study racial currents and through shrewd 
leaders prepare to get hold of and control them as they flow 
into different wards and districts. They tell us that the 



THE CITY 105 

races succeed each other in an unconscious, orderly fashion 
all over the city. As one race moves out of any section they 
know with almost unerring insight the next in succession. 
Their eyes are practiced, for they have watched these 
changes for years and are ever prepard to meet them. They 
see the Irish followed in succession by the Italian, Slav and 
Pole, Hebrew, and Oriental. An investigation of the meth- 
ods of the politicians at this point will show that the chil- 
dren of ths world are often wiser in their generation than 
the children of light. 

To what extent has the church been awake to the study 
of the city with reference to the sort of ministry which the 
city needs and expects from it 1 

Has the City a Soul? 

It is difficult to analyze the religious life of a large city. 
Occasionally a federation of churches undertakes a survey 
of this character, but by the time the survey is finished the 
constant shifting of population has made it unreliable. 
Moreover, almost all surveys of this character are apt to be- 
come wooden, and all too frequently the heart element is lost 
in the mass of statistics gathered. Besides, the same sort of 
a study made in different cities brings very different reac- 
tions. There is a somewhat definite character to every com- 
munity. Various phases of community life are expressed in 
terms of this character. This is none the less true when it 
comes to religion, for we find religion expressing itself in 
terms of all life. The religious statistician and surveyor 
frequently overlook this fact, and because they find different 
modes of expression for religion in different cities conclude 
that there is something wrong with the religion in one place 
or the other. 

Many, however, are awakened to the fact that religion 
is expressing itself in new ways. One may be religious and 
not of necessity be a churchman. Christianity is finding 
opportunities of practical expression in a thousand ways 
that the church has not taken into its program. The mes- 



106 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

sage of the church has been accepted literally by thousands 
who are now expressing the religion they have been taught 
in practical forms of life. These ways have to do with home, 
housing, education, wages, neighborly helpfulness, the rights 
of the down-trodden, protest against unjust burdens and the 
like. The Christian Church must adapt itself to the new 
demand in order to become a channel for this new expression 
of its own message. 

Meeting the Neiv Demand, The church in some cities 
has made isolated attempts to meet the new situation. Saint 
George 's Episcopal Church, New York city, conducts a trade 
school for the young people of their community in which are 
taught manual training, carpentry, electrical wiring, sheet 
metal, mechanical drawing, plumbing, sign painting, and 
printing. They also have a lunch room for women with a 
record number of 506 lunches in one day. Athletics and 
gymnastics are provided for boys and girls, baths for little 
girls average 110 per month. A Parish nurse examines 
children, and free clinic service is rendered. In the educa- 
tional departments are taught the care of the sick, first aid, 
cooking, and housekeeping. Regular classes are held in 
dress-making, embroidering, knitting, and crocheting. The 
Boys' Club has 1,000 members and is open five nights a 
week, its employment bureau placing two hundred boys in 
good positions last year. A seaside home is provided for 
women and children where they have two weeks ' vacation in 
summer. 

The Seaman's Church Institute of New York, the great- 
est institution for seamen in the world, is meeting in a re- 
markable way the needs of the thousands of transient sailors 
who are in the city for a month or less. The dormitories 
and rooms provide reasonable and clean lodgings and the 
seamen can obtain everything in the building from a shave 
to a new suit of clothes. Game rooms, entertainment hall 
and reading rooms provide means of occupying their spare 
time, and the popular soda fountain is in successful competi- 
tion with the nearby saloons. Shipwrecked sailors and the 



THE CITY 107 

survivors of the torpedoed ships are brought here in great 
numbers and are given lodging and clothing and care in the 
various departments. The religious life is looked after by 
ministers of Kussian, Swedish, and American nationalities 
who conduct services in four languages, and the house- 
mother is in constant demand with those who need advice 
or sympathy. This Institute belongs to the Episcopal 
Church. 

The Halsted Street Institutional Church (Methodist 
Episcopal), Chicago, is the only English-speaking Protes- 
tant Church and Social Settlement for 50,000 people. It is 
located among foreign-speaking people, and demonstrates 
the following program : 

Moving Picture Entertainment — Monday evening. 
Ladies' Aid — Tuesday. 
Prayer Meeting — Wednesday evening. 
Mothers' Sewing Club — Thursday afternoon. 
Men's Brotherhood — Tuesday evening. 
Chorus Choir Rehearsal — Friday evening. 
Girls' Cooking Clubs — Every afternoon and evening. 
Girls' Sewing School — Every Saturday afternoon. 
Children's Service — Every morning. 
Gymnasium Classes — Every afternoon and evening. 
Boys' Industrial Classes — Saturday morning. 
Boys' Club Boom — Open evenings. 
Queen Esther Circle — Last Sunday of each month. 
Cafeteria Noon Lunch for Men and Women — Every day but Satur- 
day and Sunday. 

Daily Vacation Bible School' — Six weeks during July and August. 

In addition to this it conducts a free dispensary and does a 
large amount of relief work. 

The Settlement and Church of All Nations, on the lower 
East Side of New York, has been meeting the new demand. 
It was founded by courageous Christian men in the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church who deplored the wholesale Protes- 
tant desertion of that thronging immigrant section of the 
metropolis. In the midst of a modern Babel this center 
plays the role of "Good Neighbor" to its polyglot commu- 



108 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA . 

nity. Five languages are at present used by the church and 
a half dozen more will be added when the funds permit — 
Russian, Chinese, Italian, Yiddish, and English are the lan- 
guages now used. English is employed in all work among 
foreign-born children. There may be hyphenated Ameri- 
cans among immigrant adults, but the immigrant child is 
an ardent American and is treated as such. Night schools, 
mothers' meetings, kindergarten, clubs, social organizations, 
prayer and preaching services are conducted for Italians. 
Night schools, sewing schools, Y. M. C. A., kindergarten. 
Boy Scouts and girls' organizations are flourishing de- 
partments of the Chinese work. Boys' clubs and a Jewish 
mothers' meeting are the present activities among the Jews. 
The outstanding features in the Russian department are the 
Russian Forum and ^^Enlightenment," a Russian religious- 
social monthly magazine. At the Forum, an audience that 
has frequently totaled 800 during the past winter gathers 
weekly for the lecture and for the discussion that follows. 
The magazine enables the church to conduct a sane prop- 
aganda that has been of remarkable patriotic service dur- 
ing these intense war days. A first-class motion picture 
equipment has been unrolling amusement and instruction 
before the delighted eyes of 800 young people on winter 
Saturday evenings for the past nine years. The church has 
its own Vacation Home at Long Branch, New Jersey, where 
workers, babies, and working girls can enjoy a ten days' va- 
cation at the seashore. 

Will the Old Program Sufftcef While these and many 
more institutions of this character are serving the Kingdom 
and the city in a large way, the church in general has clung 
to its old standard program of preaching, Sunday school, 
prayer meeting, and pastoral calls. To make this statement 
is not to depreciate this form of ministry nor to depreci- 
ate the labors of the countless ministers who have toiled and 
given their best to the work of the Kingdom in the city. It 
does, however, raise the question as to whether the church 
in any large way has sought the soul of the city; whether it 



THE CITY 109 

has noted the change in environment around its old family 
church; whether it has merely watched the incoming for- 
eigner and has not noted the change from a Protestant 
population to one that is Catholic or Jewish. 

Abandoned Churches. The list of so-called abandoned 
downtown Methodist Churches has been used as an argu- 
ment that Methodism is losing its grip upon the life of the 
city, but two such churches in Brooklyn have become thriv- 
ing Norwegian parishes. In Boston one so-called abandoned 
Methodist church has been given over to the Norwegian- 
Danish work, another is used for serving the Lithuanians, 
another has become a social service center in a poor and 
needy cosmopolitan community where a Portuguese work 
is also carried on, another is in use for Italian and social 
service work, while still another is being used for Norwegian 
and Danish ministry. One church was sold when the Ele- 
vated Street Eailway Company built its tracks close to the 
building, making it impossible for church services. 

As an illustration of the conditions surrounding 
churches at the time they have been sold, the facts pertain- 
ing to Second Street (New York) Methodist Episcopal 
Church would be of interest. At the time this property was 
sold, in 1913, there were forty-five members of the church, 
only six of whom lived within walking distance of the 
church. The rest lived in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and other 
more remote parts of the world. The Sunday school enroll- 
ment was about ninety. The membership of both church 
and Sunday school was transferred to other churches with- 
out any appreciable loss. The population around the 
church was made up as follows : Jewish 85 per cent, Eoman 
Catholic, 13% per cent, Protestant of all denominations, 
1% per cent. The church could have been continued if mis- 
sionary money had been available to support it. Lacking 
this, the church had to be closed. It is well to know, how- 
ever, that the property is continued for use by a religious 
institution which seems to have a larger opportunity in this 
field than did the Methodists. 



110 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

The Residential Section and the Suburb. In tlie sec- 
tions of our cities now unknown as residential the cliurcli is 
in a flourishing condition. It is meeting the problems of its 
own field in a more satisfactory way than is the downtown 
church which has just been discussed. For one reason 
there is generally a larger and better trained membership. 
Those who once carried on the work of the church downtown 
are now the ofl&cials and workers here. Then there is more 
money available for the support of the church. It is easier 
to get stronger preachers. While some churches of this 
character are satisfied to minister to their own membership, 
others have adopted a widespread community program, 
and this in many instances takes in the partial support of 
mission work in the more needy sections of the city. The 
problem here is to see that the church does not become self- 
centered and forget both its missionary opportunity and 
obligation in its own home town. 

Out beyond the residential section of the city lie the 
suburbs. A serious condition exists in many of the churches 
here. Many of the former supporters and workers of the 
downtown city churches have homes in the suburbs. Not 
all of them have continued to be active workers when they 
have become suburbanites. To some the church in the sub- 
urbs is a haven of rest — and they are resting. Away from 
the ceaseless roar of their business activities they forget 
the religious necessities of those who call home the very 
business district where they make the money with which to 
purchase comfort in the quiet outside communities. Thu^ 
the church has the problem of stimulating these former 
*^ active" members into new life. It must arouse the sub- 
urban church to its obligation to the struggling church in the 
city. It must bring the vision of connectionalism to those 
who have forgotten the Kingdom's united battle in the sat- 
isfaction of hearing good sermons and excellent music. 

Methodism is well organized for uniting all of its 
churches in a common task. The city and its environs pre- 
sents one of the best opportunities for a practical demon- 



THE CITY 111 

stration. Is the Methodist Episcopal Church able to rise to 
the present day challenge and make good 1 

Methodism's Definite Pbogram 

The Methodist Episcopal Church at the General Confer- 
ence of 1916 provided for a Department of City Work as a 
part of the reorganization of the Board of Home Missions 
and Church Extension. The Department of City Work 
carries on part of its activities through the City Church 
Extension Societies of the Church, but its work extends 
beyond the limits of their activities. These city societies, 
which may be formed in any community of two thousand five 
hundred or more having three or more Methodist Episcopal 
churches are the local Home Missionary Societies of the 
Church. Once a year two delegates from each city society, 
together with the superintendent of the Department of City 
Work, and the corresponding secretary of the Board of 
Home Missions and Church Extension of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, meet in a Council of Cities, the purpose 
of which is to discuss the obligation of Methodism to the task 
of the city, and to define the best ways of bringing the gos- 
pel and Christianized social service into the lives of the 
thousands of unchurched in the cities of the land. Out of the 
experience of all who are related to Methodist Episcopal 
work in the city has come an answer to the question. What 
should be done ? It takes the form of a definite program for 
cities which have not worked out an adequate program for 
themselves. 

1. The Central Downtown Church 

A great denomination should have some central head- 
quarters in every city. Here may be held all of the de- 
nominational gatherings, the offices of leaders may be here, 
and a clearing house may readily be established for all 
things pertaining to the program for the redemption of the 
city as Methodism is related to it. 

Eirst of all it should be a church, and a church that is 




m4 



THE CITY 113 

planned in equipment and staff on the broadest and strong- 
est lines. No ordinary preacher should occupy the pulpit, 
but a prophet whose voice carries conviction to the busi- 
ness men, the transients and the thousands of others who 
make the section their dwelling place for a season. The city is 
crying out for a message of hope and guidance which it is 
able to understand. Only a man of the finest religious expe- 
rience and personal qualifications can meet the demand. 
Such a man should not be weighted down with the necessity 
of raising the money with which to carry on its work. The 
forces of the entire city Methodism should be back of him. 

Associated with the man chosen to speak forth an in- 
terpretation of the teachings of Jesus in terms of the modern 
city there should be a neighborhood evangelist. A great 
task and a fruitful ministry awaits the serious labors of 
one who will find the homes where the message is needed 
and then relate the whole ministry of the church to its needs. 
Thousands there are who have lost sight of the church who 
nevertheless will welcome its message of love and hope when 
the church brings it to them. 

Here also should be the center for religious training for 
the denomination. A thoroughly equipped director of reli- 
gious education should center the religious teacher training 
and service training here so as to have efficient training and 
avoid the multiplying of small inefficient groups in the sev- 
eral churches. 

An institution of this sort can relate to itself a group of 
small, weak churches and aid them in fulfilling the ministry 
which their particular community is demanding. 

The Trinity- Wabash Parish in Chicago illustrates the 
possibilities of such a church. Previous to the organization 
and centralization of this parish there were six Methodist 
Episcopal churches in this territory, each having a pastor, 
and each becoming weaker each year. The present organi- 
zation places three churches under one administration 
with a relationship of one sort or another to each of the other 
churches. Two pastors divide their labors, one doing the 



114 CHEISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

calling and taking care of the financial part of the 
work, and the other superintending the work program of 
the parish and all of the activities. Associated with the 
pastors are a director of religions education, furnished by 
the Board of Sunday Schools, and several other workers. 
Among the things realized by this organization are special- 
ized supervision, economy in workers, unity in service, co- 
operation, and the appeal of a comprehensive program. 

In Detroit Methodism was confronted with a number of 
small churches badly located. Here two churches were do- 
ing ineffectual work when a fire burned one of them down. 
After thoroughgoing survey, the two small churches were 
united and moved to a location near a social, recreational, 
and geographical center of a neighborhood of two hundred 
thousand people, in which there was not a single Protestant 
church to command the situation. Here was planned a great 
building on a spot chosen because of its logical fitness for 
an extension that would evangelize the great community. 
A three-story building with all the conveniences of a mod- 
ern plant, gymnasium, social parlors, community assembly 
room, roof garden, etc., was being erected. When complete 
it will cost $185,000, $20,000 of which was given to Detroit 
Methodism out of the Opportunity Fund of the Board of 
Home Missions and Church Extension of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. 

2. Community Center for Social Welfare 

The downtown central church itself should be the com- 
munity center for social welfare. This is true also of 
churches in other sections of the city, according to the size 
and needs of the particular community. 

The Morgan Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, of 
Boston, is rendering a unique service as a community 
church. It conducts a children's work whereby it labors 
among 1,500 children of 25 different nationalities. Kinder- 
garten, day nursery, music and industrial school and reli- 
gious teaching all are having their influence upon both the 



THE CITY 115 

children and their parents. About ten years ago an indus- 
trial work was started whereby old clothes, furniture, old 
shoes, etc., were collected in bags brought to the industrial 
plant, renovated, and sold to poor people of the community. 
Those who do the work of reconstruction on these broken- 
down articles are the poor people of the community who 
might not find remunerative work in any other way. They 
are thus provided with occupations which give them the 
means to purchase things which they need. Every morn- 
ing at eight o 'clock the pastor preaches to them before they 
begin their daily work. The rescue work of the Seavey 
Seminary Settlement is described on page 117. The other 
feature of Morgan Memorial is the Church of All Nations, 
which gives a cordial welcome and ministers to foreigners of 
the community. 

The Good Will Industries of San Francisco do a great 
work along the lines of Morgan Memorial Industries, while 
the New Plaza Community Church, of Los Angeles, Cali- 
fornia, will duplicate the work of Morgan Memorial for the 
Latin Americans of Southern California. 

The opportunities of ministry for a thoroughly 
equipped community church are almost unlimited. The 
auditorium may be used for lectures and moving picture 
exhibits. Clinics and dispensaries may be conducted for the 
poor. Gymnasiums, swimming pools, and shower baths may 
be provided for the young people in the basement. There 
is no limit to the kind of clubs that may be organized for both 
boys and girls, for mothers and for fathers. Kindergarten, 
day nurseries, lodging houses for working girls, community 
choruses, orchestras, visiting nurses, vocational schools, 
summer camps, classes for teaching English to foreigners — 
the list is almost endless. Not every church organized for 
social welfare would have all of these activities, but each 
church may take that portion of the list which can be made 
of service to its own community. 

In Industrial Centers. The English-speaking and poly- 
glot industrial groups in our cities include over 10,000,000 



116 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA 

who are employed in manufacturing and mechanical indus- 
tries. Among these people is an increasing unrest. The 
sporadic successes of the I. W. W. indicate the situation 
among unskilled workers, and as soon as the war is over 
problems now held in abeyance by government supervision 
will become live issues. In the modern city the industrial 
community church must adapt itself not only for the urgent 
needs of to-day but for the changes which are sure to come 
with the inauguration of peace. 

To meet such conditions neighborhood churches are 
planned in polyglot communities where specific needs have 
been determined. Community churches are planned for 
neglected communities where no other work exists. This 
church will fulfill functions of gymnasiums, day nurseries, 
vocational training, home-making, social and religious 
centers. Together with these two types of churches there 
must be parish houses for general utility work to be added 
to the equipment of old family churches. Specialists trained 
in social work and visiting nurses must be a part of the staff. 
The importance of this type of church ministry is seen in 
cities like Gary, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan; and Toledo, 
Ohio. When the church is in a polyglot community, it either 
becomes a Church of All Nations or expires. The ministry 
of this type of church has already been described on another 
page. At the Church of All Nations at Morgan Memorial, 
Boston, provision is also made for training the leaders of 
non-English-speaking peoples of New England, Italians, 
Turks, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, the entire school con- 
stituting a department of Boston University. For this type 
of work a community plant and equipment is absolutely es- 
sential as is also an adequate staff of workers, which should 
include among the foremost a religious-educational director. 

For Foreigners, Already the Methodist Episcopal 
Church conducts special missions for foreign-speaking 
groups. These are scattered all over the country and in- 
clude Italian, Scandinavian (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish), 
Chinese, Japanese, Slavs (Bohemian, Polish, Russian, Ser- 



THE CITY 117 

vian, Eoumanian), Hungarian, Lithuanian, Greek, Armen- 
ian, Finnish, Syrian, Portuguese, French and French-Cana- 
dian, Welsh, and Jewish. The Americanizing process which 
changes the foreigner into an English-speaking individual 
makes work among these people more or less permanently 
missionary in method; for as soon as they become Ameri- 
canized they are assimilated into the American church. In 
fact, many churches do successful work among foreign- 
speaking peoples in the English language entirely. 

The Negroes' Need. The community church for Negroes 
is also a necessity. The northward emigration of great 
numbers of Negroes in 1917 so altered the status of the 
Negro population and modified the character of some of 
the cities in general, that there developed urgent need for 
an increased number of pastors, more and larger churches, 
and community centers capable of caring for the last need 
of these Southern strangers in the North. Especially is 
there need of social workers to look out for the housing con- 
ditions of these people. 

The community church in the suburban district is mani- 
festing its usefulness. Before the suburb becomes abso- 
lutely static in its methods it is wisdom to provide for a 
community plant and equipment, adequate churches and 
pastors to make the religious life of a suburb an actual part 
of the Kingdom's progress. 

Scientific Rescue Work. So long as sin exists in the 
world there will be wrecks of men seeking whatever port 
they are able to make. This fact accounts for the rescue 
mission of the church. Such missions have been ministering 
to men and women along the byways of the cities for many 
years. Only recently, however, have the methods used been 
in accord with modern knowledge and progress. Here, as 
in other fields of human activity, nonconstructive methods 
are being laid aside for the sort of help that helps the ^^down 
and outer" to help himself to a position of self-respect. 

The Seavey Seminary Settlement of the Morgan Me- 
morial Methodist Episcopal Church, Boston, emphasizes 



118 CHRISTIAN DEMOCBACY FOB AMEBICA 

what can be done for a man who has entirely lost his bear- 
ings, if the best of our knowledge is applied to the task. The 
man who comes to the door of this institution may not enter 
if he has as much as five cents to his name. Only the penni- 
less is welcome. Once in, he receives the ministry of five 
skilled experts. He has a thorough physical examination. 
He comes under the direction of a social secretary. A psy- 
chologist gives him a modified form of the Binet test. An 
industrial director gives him a chance to get started in the 
way of self-support, and a minister talks to him at prayers 
concerning the helpfulness of fellowship with Jesus Christ. 
The man earns all that he receives, and as he improves he is 
promoted from the double-decker beds of the Junior De- 
partment to the single beds of the Middlers. When he be- 
comes a Senior he is given a key to the front door and is 
made a big brother to one of the Juniors. Once a week the 
entire staff of workers lunch together and check up each 
man. 

In the downtown business section of Sioux City, Iowa, 
is the Helping Hand Mission. Hiere a man with vision 
established a humble work among life's castaways and now 
has a great cheap hotel which supports the evangelistic mis- 
sion which he conducts. The Mission Hotel attracts men be- 
cause they can secure a room for thirty-five cents and a bed 
in the dormitory for fifteen cents. This draws the homeless 
men around the mission, provides a place to care for them at 
a minimum expense, and gives unusual opportunities for 
teaching them the message of the Master. It is hoped that 
this mission will gradually develop into Methodism's down- 
town evangelistic center, with a training school for Christian 
workers, a university settlement for Morningside College. 

The City for God 

The finest of programs will not win the city to God. In 
addition to careful study of the problems of the city, there 
must also be the consecration to service and support on the 
part of the people to become interested. The Centenary of 



THE CITY 119 

Methodist Missions affords an excellent opportunity for 
the church to cease marking time or retreating in the city 
stronghold, and to advance. No half-way measures will ac- 
complish the needed results; the church without reserve 
must give of itself, time and money. With the church in the 
city properly equipped and manned the next generation 
would be full of Christian leaders who could make the city 
Christian for all time. 



Questions for Discussion 

1. To what extent is America becoming a nation of 
cities I Prove your statement. 

2. Characterize the two general types of American 
cities. 

3. What problems are common to all cities 1 

4. Discuss the new polyglot city. How general is it? 

5. In what respect has the church studied its city obli- 
gation? 

6. Cite some instances of attempts on the part of the 
church to meet the new demand. 

7. What part does the church in the residential section 
and the suburb play in the evangelization of the city? 

8. State Methodism's definite city program. 

9. What is a central downtown church? A commu- 
nity church? 

10. In what way must industrial centers be ministered 
to? 

11. How may the foreigner be won? 

12. What is scientific rescue work? 



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